AMBROSE : Duty, honor, country (fülszöveg)
This scholarly and definitive history ... shows conclusively that the United States Military Academy has been one of Uncle Sam's best bargains.
By and Iarge it is a splendid tribute to a great institution and in writing such a history Dr. Ambrose has filled a gap that has too long existed.
West Point regards its own past with veneration yet also as a living thing. The past is everywhere: in the museum, with its trophies from all the American wars, in the architecture, in the design of the cadet uniforms, in the old forts and antique cannon scattered about the post, in the names that still can be heard in the barracks—names like Thayer, Mahan, Lee, Jackson, Grant, Sherman, Pershing, Eisenhower, and MacArthur. The long gray line is unending. The cadet sees the veterans who have gone before him and the new plebes who will follow. When a graduate of 1925 meets a graduate of 1955 in some remote outpost, the discussion can center on the same curriculum, subject matter, traditions, and teachers. Often even the slang will be unchanged.
In its first decade and a half, West Point was mismanaged and at the War of 1812 was a failure. Then in 1817 Sylvanus Thayer became Superintendent. He brought order out of chaos, making the Academy one of the great scientific institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a model for civilian schools to copy. After the Civil War, however, and until the third decade of the twentieth century, the Academy stagnated. Then in 1919 Douglas MacArthur became Superintendent. He and his successors returned the Academy to the mainstream of American life, creating the highly esteemed institution of military education that now exists. It is this story of timelessness and of change that Stephen Ambrose brings to his readers in Duty, Honor, Country.
Stephen Ambrose has "made the history of West Point into American history. . . . It is a delight to read academic history in which there are live students living lively lives."—Frederick Rudolph, Professor of History, Williams College.
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