Alexander Rose's third book on American history, Men of War: The American Soldier in Combat at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, is a work of considerable ambition. Focused on the day-to-day experience of American soldiers and the ways that it changed (or didn't) over time, Rose's book is heavily indebted to The Face of Battle, in which John Keegan "investigated the experience of the common British soldier--what he felt, heard, and saw--in three epic battles: Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815, and the Somme in 1916." Rose, whose second book, Washington's Spies, was adapted into the AMC television series Turn, adapts Keegan's template for American soldiers at Bunker Hill in 1775, Gettysburg in 1863 and Iwo Jima in 1945.
Because these battles have already been written about a great deal, Rose wisely spends only a scant few pages recapping them in the traditional, strategic sense. Then he barrels into the details of combat, re-orienting the reader's understanding of each conflict to a soldier's perspective using extensive quotations from contemporary letters and journals. The book brings to light both how much and how little has changed as military technology has progressed, with a special emphasis on the physical and psychic wounds endured by soldiers. Rose successfully emphasizes the human elements of war, investigating the seemingly mundane aspects of soldierly life with profoundly revealing results. Men of War is a worthy American successor to Keegan's masterpiece. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books