On the whole, I think that I would have been more impressed with this monograph a few years ago, as many of the issues that Clodfelter invokes are already part of my perspective. That said, he does do a fine job of illustrating how the organizational culture that still largely informs the United States Air Force came about; between the reaction to the horrors of the Great War, and the sense that there had to be a more efficient way to wage war, which reflected the values of the "Progressive" movement of the first two decades of the 20th century in the United States. That this supposed "progressive" way of war looks like the same old attritional grind and terror is a commentary on the nature of real war. ( )