Comprehensive overview of institution ( )

Duty, Honor, Country: the motto of the United States Military Academy has resounded for more than 200 years. Stephen Ambrose charts the history of West Point from its origins in the Revolutionary War--when students attached to engineering and artillery regiments studied the rudiments of strategy, but mostly came and went as they pleased--to the academy's time of crisis during the Vietnam War. Ambrose's narrative centers on West Point's superintendents, the Army officers who emphasized both tradition and innovation over the years.Yet this book is a fitting celebration of an institution that has been of central importance to the American military.