Here is a provocative, comprehensive, and brilliant book which challenges most of the current assumptions and prevailing ideas with respect to the role of the military in society. Stressing the value of the military outlook for American national policy today, Mr. Huntington has performed the distinctive task of developing a general theory of civil-military relations and subjecting it to a rigorous historical analysis.

Mr. Huntington's theory is, in essence, that the officer corps is a professional body in the same sense as the bar or the clergy; it acknowledges a responsibility to society as a whole and possesses a sense of corporateness which excludes outsiders. These give it a distinctive outlook and role which create the modern problem of civil-military relations. The author's aim is to correct what he calls "popular misimpressions" of the nature of the professional military mind and the meaning of civilian control. He explores the theoretical and historical perspectives of civil-military relations in modern nations. He presents our liberal values and our conservative Constitution as two constant factors in the variable course of civil-military relations in the United States, and analyzes in these terms the history of the military profession in this country. In showing the radical change which took place in both the function and the attitude of the military as a consequence of World War II, Korea, and the Cold War, he discusses the political role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the difference in civil-military relations between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, the increasingly important role of Congress, and the organization and operation of the Department of Defense.

Mr. Huntington deals with such questions as: What principles should govern the relations of the modern officer corps to the state? Can a democracy achieve military security without sacrificing its political institutions? What pattern of civil-military relations tends to aid the achievement of military security? What has been the traditional role of the military in American society? What are the effects of increased military influence since 1940 on American government and policy? To all these questions, and many more, Mr. Huntington offers new and challenging answers. The book ends with a plea that American society ease the tension existing between its liberal values and the needs of national security by altering the values so as to coincide more closely with the conservative realism of the professional military viewpoint.

This is an important and scholarly addition to existing works on the role of the military in society. Many will disagree with Mr. Huntington's conclusions, but few will fail to be impressed by the force and clarity with which he develops them.

Mr. Huntington teaches government at Harvard University. This is his first book.