This is [Colonel Bolger's] most significant work to date, important both for students of the contemporary U.S. Army and for general readers- even those normally uninterested in military affairs. Bolger documents the infantry's change over the past sixty years from a mass force of citizen soldiers to a small body of elite professionals. He presents each currently existing type of infantry-paratroopers, air assault, mechanized, light, rangers, and marines... In each case study, Bolger emphasizes the quality and preparation, making it quite clear that will without skill and motivation without competence are certain routes to disaster... While praising today's infantry as the best the country has ever fielded, Bolger raises the prospect that the U.S. military, by emphasizing technology and economy, will leave the country with an elite infantry too small to sustain heavy losses and too specialized to be quickly replaced. DEATH GROUND
