Air Age

From Publishers Weekly
Air power has been at the cutting edge of 20th-century war. Its story is most often told from a triumphalist perspective. Van Creveld, professor emeritus of history at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, acknowledges air power's past glory with his usual blend of perception and panache. He then tells the rest of the story-the part air power enthusiasts neglect. Even in its heyday, air power's achievements were limited: armies and navies did not disappear. For more than half a century, air power's operational effectiveness has been limited by thermonuclear weapons at one end of the spectrum and low-intensity conflict at the other.