LOVELL : Neither Athens nor Sparta? (fülszöveg)
The image American service academy officials like to convey of the institutions they represent is that of a creative synthesis of classical Athens, with its concern for developing well-educated and cultured individuals, and of Sparta, with its emphasis on discipline, physical prowess, courage, and honor. John P. Lovell challenges the official image in this detailed study of the service academy as a contemporary institution in transition.
West Point, Annapolis, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Air Force Academy have developed beyond the "trade school" format in seeking to provide a solid education as well as military training. They have even adjusted with some grace to congressional mandates to admit women and minorities to the academies. But Lovell argues that these changes have only tended to magnify the contradictions between Athenian and Spartan goals.
The book begins with a history of the service academies up to World War II. On the eve of the war, the organizational structures of the past century remained fundamentally intact — but currents of change were set in motion, and the postwar environment brought further impetus for reform.
Lovell then furnishes case studies that provide insight into the process by which major changes were effected at each of the four academies during the postwar years. He examines the crucial role of leadership in forging policy: the controversial academic deanship of Robert McDermott, who was determined to break with the seminary model for the fledgling Air Force Academy; the superintendency of Garrison Davidson at West Point; the innovative command of Frank Leamy and others at New London; and the reforms of Charles Melson and James Calvert at Annapolis.
Neither Athens nor Sparta? emphasizes the distinctiveness of each academy as well as the similarities among them. Contending that these institutions are at a critical juncture, Lovell concludes with an assessment of the service academies today and proposes thoughtful scenarios of the directions they might pursue in the future.
"John Lovell has produced the most informative and temperate treatment of the contemporary service academy. By extensive field work he has pieced together a hitherto unavailable postwar history of these institutions, and his judicious but never oppressive use of organization theory greatly enhances the significance of the story."
— Lawrence I. Radway,
Dartmouth College,
author of Soldiers and Scholars
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
