Military Books Research Articles

Militarization of the Ukrainian Publishing Market During the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the article is to analyse the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war, which has been ongoing since 2014, on the Ukrainian publishing industry and to characterize the transformations that the book market has undergone as a result of the full-scale invasion in 2022. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The article examines the transformations that have taken place in book media as a result of the military conflict. The research used bibliographic searches, statistical research, the comparative method, desktop research, as well as the methods of typology, observation, generalization and analogy. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The events of Russia’s war against Ukraine have become a serious challenge for the Ukrainian media system and have impacted the book publishing industry in particular. Therefore, changes in the publishing landscape and in publishing houses’ business models are analysed. RESEARCH RESULTS: The article describes the main changes that the publishing market in Ukraine has undergone as a result of Russian aggression. On the basis of statistical data, the authors analyse the dynamics of changes in the number of publishers and the increase in the number of military books. The authors focus on the emergence of a new literary phenomenon, namely veteran literature, and the emergence of a significant number of veteran publishers. Changes in the business models of publishers are analysed. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The war has had a significant impact on the organizational structure of the Ukrainian publishing industry. This includes the moving of publishing facilities to other territories, changes in infrastructure, transition to other publication formats, entering new markets, etc. This experience could be useful for developing problem-solving strategies in this segment of the media industry.

Library of the Auditorium of Military Affairs in 1918—1921: History and Development of the Holding

The solution of urgent tasks to develop modern approaches to the organization of military libraries functioning is impossible without using the existing achievements in the field of military librarianship. Retrospective analysis of the work of the Information Historical and Scientific Center — Military Historical Library of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (IHSC — MHL GS AF RF) in the Soviet period can be used to improve the work of Russian military libraries at the present stage.Due to the lack of comprehensive studies on the history of the IHSC — MHL GS AF RF in the first years of Soviet power, this article attempts to fill this gap, in particular, to establish the sources of formation of the collection of the library, which changed its name. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the history of creation and formation of one of such sources — the library of the Auditorium of Military Affairs (later — the Department of Universal Military Training at the headquarters of the Petrograd District Commissariat for Military Affairs) in the context of the construction of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (WPRA) in 1918—1921, as well as to analyze the dynamics of the library holding.The relevance of the issue under study is conditioned, on the one hand, by its insufficient research, and on the other hand, by the demand for the historical experience of military libraries to develop principled approaches to their reform. The source base of the research is represented by the materials of Russian archives (the Russian State Military Archive, the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg, the Current Archive of the IHSC — MHL GS AF RF), documents of the main and central bodies of military administration of the RSFSR, publications in the periodical press.The research has broadened the understanding of the fate of military book collections of the Russian Empire after its collapse and the initial stage of formation of military librarianship in Soviet Russia. The fate of some nationalized book collections before they were added to the holding of the library of the Auditorium of Military Affairs has been established. The documents revealing the main directions of the library’s activity have been introduced into scientific turnover; its organizational and staff structure has been analyzed; the interrelation of the library’s history with the history of the Red Army in the first years of Soviet power has been traced. The results obtained show that the impressive book collection accumulated by the library of the Auditorium of Military Affairs is now a part of the holding of the IHSC — MHL GS AF RF.

ПАТРИК ГОРДОН - СЛУЖИЛЫЙ ИНОЗЕМЕЦ И ЧЕЛОВЕК "КНИЖНОЙ УЧЕНОСТИ" НА РУССКОЙ СЛУЖБЕ

This article analyzes the process of Europeanization of the Russian state, in particular, the professionalization of the old Moscow army according to the European model. The role of serving foreigners in the dissemination of military knowledge and skills is analyzed on the example of the Scot Patrick Gordon, a serving foreigner in the Russian service. On the basis offragmentary information from sources, an idea is created about the level of education and knowledge of a well-known service foreigner, the future mentor of Peter the Great, his role in the translation of military book publications of European origin into Russian is analyzed, and a bright type of service foreigner, military figure, a man of «book learning» is created.

Russian Translations of Foreign Military Books in the 17th Century

Abstract The article explores the role of military treatises and manuals as objects and factors in cultural and technology transfer from Western Europe to Russia in the 17th century in a comparative perspective. Listing the treatises on military tactics, organization and technology, translated for the needs of the Russian monarchs before the radical Westernizing reforms under Tsar Peter I started in 1700, the article analyses how these texts were perceived by their Russian readers and how they might have contributed to the military change in Eastern Europe. It defines the Russian military culture of the age as an elite culture, centred around the ruler’s person. The article also contextualizes the history of translated military books within knowledge transfer, in particular the transfer of Early Modern scientific ideas in Russia, as these books provided an attractive insight into European science and technology, not available for the Russian elite from other sources.

An Index of Chemical Substances and Plants in the Military Book of 1607

The article presents an annotated publication of a fragment from the Military Book of 1607, the earliest Russian translation of a European military treatise. This translation was based on the second volume of the German compendium Kriegsbuch, published in 1573 by Leonhard von Fronsperger. At the end of their work, the translators Mikhail Yuriev and Ivan Fomin, employed at the Ambassadorial Chancery, placed an index of the mentioned mineral and organic substances and compounds as well as plants used to produce gunpowder and other fuels. The introduction to the publication deals with how and why the index was compiled, what entries belong to it, and what are its linguistic features. The article describes a previously unknown manuscript of the Military Book. Some suggestions are made concerning the strategies used by the translators while working with the German and Russian text and also concerning supplementary materials they used, primarily, Russian manuscript translations of European medical treatises and advice given by foreign medical staff. In the appendix, the index is edited in full with alternative readings according to the two surviving manuscripts. The commentary identifies the mentioned substances and plants with their names in the German original of the Military Book, its later version completed by Anisim Mikhailov-Radishevsky in 1620 and other Russian writings of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Book Collections of European Military Libraries of the 18th — 19th Centuries in the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences

It is known that the history of book collections of past centuries’ libraries, including military ones, is tragic: for many reasons, they are often either scattered or preserved in small fragments. Today, when libraries intensively work to digitize their holdings and search out historical book collections, it is very important to identify and attribute books from foreign, as well as from Russian military libraries.For the first time, the article describes the work carried out to identify publications of foreign (and partly Russian) military libraries from the rare books collection of the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article considers the publications as a source of information about scientific knowledge (military libraries were aimed to acquaint their readers with the basics of military art and the latest achievements in military science). There is shown that the content of such libraries’ collections did not exclude thematic diversity, targeted to comprehensively form the officer’s personality: professional, moral and cultural. The article examines the books of the 18th—19th centuries from military libraries of Europe, currently stored in the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the book marks in them proving the publications’ belonging to specific military libraries. There is highlighted the importance of book marks for the attribution of collections (and libraries) that existed in the past, but turned out to be scattered. The results obtained show that the publications and book marks of military book collections are a strong and reliable source in studying the history of military affairs, military science, and the history of military libraries, and confirm the need for further serious work with the library’s rare book collection.

조선후기 피갑(皮甲)의 구조와 특징

The study of armor in the late Joseon Dynasty has been focused on high-ranking generals’ armor, with a lack of attention paid to the leather armor worn by foot soldiers. To address this, documents and artifacts relating to this armor are compared and analyzed in this study. According to 19th century records, “Pigap(皮甲: leather armor)” was made by sewing a coat from a fabric and then attaching many leather scales inside. The coat has a round neckline, short sleeves, and linear metal epaulets on both shoulders. It features rectangular black lacquered scales that are exposed by being attached to the lining. By comparing sizes, fabrics, and patterns, 18 kinds of leather armor artifacts are classified into seven types: four made of cotton coats with leather scales and three made of silk satin coats with leather scales. There were four characteristics of leather armor. First, an illustration of Pigap, the armor in military book

Translation of Military Terms in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War

The Art of War, renowned as one of the most influential military book in the world, has been extending its tremendous popularity and profound influence with over 30 English versions. In his book, Sun Tzu provided an overall view of military strategies to resolve contradiction and win battles. Through its spread across different countries, the military terms has remained as translation difficulties in various tasks. This paper will mainly focus on the translation of military terms in The Art of War from the comparative study of two translated versions with appropriate approaches to solving relevant issues in the task.

Women Music Teachers as Military Band Directors during World War II

The purpose of this study was to determine how women music teachers became the United States’ first female military band directors. Interviews with seventy-nine World War II military bandswomen revealed that seven of the ten chosen female directors were music teachers prior to their enlistment in the Army, Coast Guard, or Marines—band and orchestra teachers, music supervisors, and a college professor. Six of those seven directors are included in this study. Research questions pertained to their childhood music education, formal schooling, music-teacher employment, why they quit teaching to enlist, military education, military leadership and performance experiences, how they continued music making after the war, and the meaning of this experience for their lives. Corroboration of interview responses with primary and secondary sources—census data, school records, city directories, social security index, newspaper articles, photographs, diaries, military documents, military and WWII books—revealed that these music educators had accurate memories, outstanding music education and performance backgrounds, substantial leadership experiences, and diverse musical backgrounds that made them good choices for leading military bands and ensembles. All were part of significant firsts for women in the military. Near the end of their lives, they believed that their service as a military band director and musician had substantial impact on their lives and in some cases valued as “the most important” experience of their lives.

Советская военная администрация и книжное дело в Восточной Германии в 1945–1949 гг.: поддержка немецких издательств и выпуск школьных учебников

Советская военная администрация и книжное дело в Восточной Германии в 1945–1949 гг.: поддержка немецких издательств и выпуск школьных учебников

Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Part I)

This two-part historiographical article examines many of the key historical books written in English on military operations in the Persian Gulf from 1990 to 1991. Although increasingly viewed, even by historians, as little more than a historical footnote to the tumultuous events in the region after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003, the events of the Persian Gulf War, often referred to by their U.S. operational names Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, have given us a rich and important literature on its military aspects of the war. The Gulf War was viewed at the time as an important test of U.S. political resolve after the retreat from the wars in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, and an equally important test of the rebirth of the American military. The article begins with a summary of those operations in the Gulf now twenty-five years in the past. It goes on to review the most important military historical books on the dominant subject of air power in the Gulf in part one and follows that in part two with works on ground operations, naval support, key memoirs, professional military analyses of the events, and general or popular works. Part two will be published in ijhm issue 36–2 and contain a comprehensive listing of the major works discussed. In all, some forty-three major books and over twenty additional works are summarized with an analysis of their contributions to the various debates on the planning and preparation for the war and the key elements of its conduct. This was an important operation that led to deeper U.S. and western involvement in the Persian Gulf region and, ultimately, to a second invasion of Iraq with even more dramatic consequences in 2003.

Truth and (self) censorship in military memoirs

It can be difficult for researchers from outside the military to gain access to the field. However, there is a rich source on the military that is readily available for every researcher: military memoirs. This source does provide some methodological challenges with regard to truth and (self) censorship, nevertheless. This study questions how truth and (self) censorship issues influence the content of these military autobiographies. It shows that these issues are not only a concern for researchers, but also for military writers themselves. The study provides concrete quantitative data based on military Afghanistan memoirs published between 2001 and 2010 from five different countries: the UK, the US, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. The majority of soldier-authors make some kind of truth claim in their books that they also substantiate. Military books published by traditional publishers do so significantly more often than self-published books. In books published in Anglo-Saxon countries soldier-authors make truth claims five times more often than do military authors from the Netherlands and Germany. At the same time, military authors also frequently admit to some form of self-censuring, so truth claims and self-censorship go hand in hand. From each of the countries studied, at least one author mentions being actively censored by the military, but most do not even mention it, making censorship a common, almost normal military feature. Making truth claims, mentioning being censored, or self-censoring do not influence the kind of plots these authors write either in a negative, or positive way.

The Tirpitz All Told

The Tirpitz All Told Phillip Parotti (bio) The Hunt for Hitler’s Warship by Patrick Bishop (Regnery History, 2013. 426pages. Illustrated. $27.95) Patrick Bishop, a graduate of Wimbledon College and Corpus Christi, Oxford, first established himself as a significant writer by serving nearly thirty years as a foreign correspondent for such papers as the Evening Standard, the Observer, the Sunday Times, and the Telegraph. During that time he saw considerable action while covering major British engagements from the Falklands to Afghanistan and only withdrew from dangerous work when he determined that he was no longer nimble enough to keep up the pace. Thereafter Bishop turned his attention to writing military history and rapidly turned himself into one of the United Kingdom’s leading authors on the subject, delivering such critically acclaimed best sellers as Fighter Boys (2004), 3 Para (2006), the book for which he won the British Army’s Military Book of the Year award, Bomber Boys (2008), Ground Truth (2009), Wings (2012), and Target Tirpitz (2012), published in the United States as The Hunt for Hitler’s Warship (2013). Bishop’s preparations for writing The Hunt for Hitler’s Warship, while steadily rewarding, proved both long and arduous. With books like Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys, Bishop could focus much of his attention on raf records. The Hunt presented a more complex problem, requiring him to do meticulous research in the archives of the Royal Navy, the German Navy, the raf, and the [End Page xxvii] Allied and German governments. At the same time insofar as it was possible—considering that more than thirty operations were launched against the Tirpitz—he had to go through as much material as he could assemble from the papers, letters, and diaries of various participants; and then, finally, he had to interview an extensive list of survivors from the engagements he intended to review. One of the strengths of the book, one which readers will find gratifying, is the thoroughness with which Bishop realizes his aims. No one ever mistook Hitler for a genius with regard to matters of naval strategy. As Bishop writes, “Naval matters played a subordinate role in Hitler’s military calculations; an attitude he did not bother to disguise. He was a soldier not a sailor.” His plan for invading Great Britain by means of Operation Sea Lion provided a case in point and demonstrated his almost total misunderstanding of naval warfare. But twice at least, once through nefarious calculation and once through timidity, Hitler managed to stumble into what proved for him to be good things at sea, and both had to do with the Tirpitz. In the first instance, while the Royal Navy adhered to the terms of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement signed in 1935, Hitler cheated. As a result, while the latest British battleship, King George V, was built not to exceed the agreed 35,000 tons, the Kriegsmarine constructed both Tirpitz and her sister ship, Bismarck, to be 42,500-ton behemoths. Apart from size the German battleships were faster, could steam farther without refueling than their British counterparts, carried 15-inch rather than 14-inch guns, and were so well armored that, early in the war, British bombs simply bounced off their decks. In May 1941, when the Bismarck broke out of the Denmark Straits and sank the “mighty” Hood, the biggest ship in the British fleet—the ship went down in less than three minutes with the loss of 1,416 men—the enormous powers of destruction embodied in the German ships became shockingly apparent to everyone. Subsequently and with something bordering on consternation, the Admiralty ordered nearly every warship in the Atlantic to give chase, but it was only by means of a lucky torpedo dropped from an antiquated Swordfish biplane that the Bismarck’s rudder was jammed, allowing an array of Royal Navy vessels and planes to harry her until the battleships Rodney and King George V were able to close in and sink her. The threat that the Bismarck posed to Britain’s North Atlantic lifeline and the difficulty the Royal Navy experienced in putting her down made a deep and lasting impression on Churchill. The loss...

Moss Roberts’ Translation of Three Kingdoms and the Inscape of Ancient Chinese Military Culture

Three Kingdoms is one of the greatest literary works in China, and has a wide influence on Chinese society. It inherits the excellent ancient Chinese military culture, including the rich culture of the wars, military figures, military books, weaponry, and military system. Military culture in ancient China is the intelligent fruit and a valuable heritage of Chinese people, reflecting their national integrity and character. However, the peculiarity of Chinese military culture always poses problems for translation, which hinders the way for it to be spread to the world. Moss Roberts has done a good job in translating this novel and made great efforts in reproducing the cultural information. This paper studies the translation problems caused by culture differences and translating techniques Moss Roberts has employed to convey source language culture, and to help the Western readers understand ancient Chinese society and people. Key words: Moss Roberts; Military culture; Inscape

Military music in and its effects on Shakespeare’s plays: call, symbol and rhetoric

This article examines the use of military music in, and its effects on, Shakespeare’s plays. Military music-primarily sounds of drum and trumpet which accompanies soldiers into battles-in Shakespeare’s plays has often been considered music to represent the splendor and power of the royal courts, or background sound effects to represent convincingly the progress of the battle. In fact, stage directions such as alarum, retreat or parley indicate that Shakespeare differentiated sounds made on a trumpet and/or drum into a call to arms, a cue for soldiers entering, and a call to retire or withdraw, well enough for theatrical demands. This was possible because both the playwright and his audience understood the function of military music which they could become familiar with military sounds through their acquaintance with the drilling of citizen soldiers at Miles End. In All’s Well That Ends Well, we also find that Shakespeare used a military drum to epitomize the emptiness of soldierly values evoked by the playas a whole. Hence, the principal motivation of this article is to consider why military music in general, and a military drum in particular, became a matter of great importance to Shakespeare. As many literary critics have demonstrated, off-stage military music was central to the audience’s imagination of warfare as the sound effects they generated. However, I want to take a step further and argue that military musicians’ physical engagement on stage was also important in this process. Consider King Lear, where the preparation for the battle between the French and the British army is represented by audio-visual effects: “Enter with a drummer and colours, Queen Cordelia, Gentlemen, and soldiers” (4.2.6.1-2) and “Enter with a drummer and colours, Edmund, Regan, Gentlemen, and soldiers” (4.6.77.1-2). Similarly in Julius Caesar, Brutus’ and Cassius’ troops meet on stage before the battle of Philippi with the sound of a drum: “Drum. Antony and Octavius march with their army. Drum within. Enter, marching, Brutus, Cassius, and their army ... Octavius’s and Antony’s army makes a stand” (5.1.20.1-6). If many of the audience were either well versed in military theories or familiar with the real world of warfare, the placing of military musicians on stage would have been immediately meaningful-a vital role in representing the battle discipline of troops. In other words, Shakespeare used military musicians to introduce a moment of anticipation and suspense with off-stage sound effects, while reinforcing the image of themselves as a key component in martial formation. In this way, the physical placing of military musicians on stage, accompanied by sound effects, could contribute significant meaning and has more value than its conventional function as a signal of the entrance of royalty or background sound effects. In addition to its theatrical and symbolic functions, military music in Shakespeare’s plays is used as the language of war and sexual desire as seen in All’s Well That Ends Well or Troilus and Cressida. As the long contest which involved the English against the Spanish (which lasted for over fifteen years), audio-visual images of the military became customary for ordinary people, including women. Under these circumstances, Shakespeare became to challenge the illusion of military values such as soldier’s honour and discipline set out in contemporary military books and manuals by using military music, a recurring symbol of war, rhetorically. Military music was valuable for its dramatic effect and functioned for the audience not only as an effective audio-visual accompaniment to the action but also as a means to interrogate the ideals of military action and explore the complexities of male-female relationships established by military language and imagery.

New Zealand war correspondence before 1915

Little research has been published on New Zealand war correspondence but an assertion has been made in a reputable military book that the country has not established a strong tradition in this genre. To test this claim, the author has made a preliminary examination of war correspondence prior to 1915 (when New Zealand’s first official war correspondent was appointed) to throw some light on its early development. Because there is little existing research in this area much of the information for this study comes from contemporary newspaper reports. In the years before the appointment of Malcolm Ross as the nation’s official war correspondent, New Zealand newspapers clearly saw the importance of reporting on war, whether within the country or abroad and not always when it involved New Zealand troops. Despite the heavy cost to newspapers, journalists were sent around the country and overseas to cover conflicts. Two types of war correspondent are observable in those early years―the soldier journalist and the ordinary journalist plucked from his newsroom or from his freelance work. In both cases one could call them amateur war correspondents.

The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645 (review)

Reviewed by: The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645 Gervase Phillips The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645.By David R. Lawrence. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009. ISBN 978-90-04-17079-7. Abbreviations lists. Note on dates. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xix, 439. $221.00. Lawrence's foray into the dissemination of military theory and practice in the late Tudor and early Stuart period is a fascinating and useful addition to the, currently rather dynamic, historiography of warfare in early modern England. It is an exercise not merely in military history but intellectual history too, with a focus on the relationships between authors and printers; theory and practice, and experienced 'men of warre' and 'paper soldiers.' He places particular emphasis on the lessons learned in the Low Countries by Elizabeth's veterans, men such as Robert Barrett, Roger Williams and Thomas Trussell; they fostered a progressively-minded military culture, as avid readers of both domestic and foreign military theory (the Huguenot general François de La Noue was one favourite) and as authors themselves of books and treatises that aimed to educate 'the complete soldier': drill-master; tactician; infantryman; cavalryman and field engineer. The importance of 'military circles' (groups of veterans and theorists enjoying the patronage of prominent households, such as that of the Veres or Henry, Prince of Wales) is noted too, in sustaining a vital military culture between Elizabeth's wars [End Page 939]and the civil wars of the 1640s and in 'remilitarizing' the English aristocracy. For the common soldier, militia organisations, such as London's Honourable Artillery Company ('the incubator of English military practices'), allowed veteran professionals and amateurs to drill and train together, forging a positive relationship that encouraged some militia captains, most notably William Barriffe, to enter the theoretical fray and publish their own studies of 'moderne' warfare. The most significant manifestation of this lively early Stuart military culture was the codification and regulation of military practice; heavily influenced by the Dutch example and drawing productively on Jacques de Gheyn's Wapenhandelinge, the Instructions for Musters and Armesauthorized by the Privy Council in 1623 was a particularly important step in standardising English drill. Among the difficulties of studying military theory, drill-books and manuals are analysing the extent to which they actually reflected contemporary practice in the field and, on the other hand, understanding the time-lag between the adoption of a particular practice and its emergence in the literature as a topic worthy of note. Lawrence is generally very aware of these issues; when discussing Maurice of Nassau's reforms in infantry drill in the 1590s he follows Harald Kleinschmidt's suggestion that the Dutch drew upon established English infantry drills and that the countermarch, by which Dutch infantry maximized its firepower, actually echoed early sixteenth-century Landsknechttactics. However, in other areas, it is possible that Lawrence has not always recognised some important precedents. For example, Lawrence suggests that sixteenth-century English soldiers 'were never enamoured with [ trace italienne] fortresses' and it was only having encountered them in Holland in 1585 that they began to pay serious attention to siege-craft (reflected in the publication of Paul Ives's The Practice of Fortificationin 1589). This is clearly wrong. Lawrence seems unaware of the scale and nature of the fighting in France and Scotland, 1542-50 (which he dismisses as 'occasional battles with the Scots') and the significance of the trace italienneto those campaigns. The first such fortification in the British Isles was constructed by the English at Eyemouth in 1547; others followed, including the massive earthwork fort at Haddington that twice resisted French sieges, 1548-49. Two of the veteran authors Lawrence discusses, Humphrey Barwick and Thomas Churchyard, fought in these campaigns. The former must certainly have seen modern artillery fortifications at Boulogne in 1545; the latter was defending one, at Lauder, when the English war effort collapsed in 1550. This tendency to ignore important early sixteenth-century precedents does not distract from Lawrence's overall thesis, but neither is it a wholly insignificant point; Lawrence, like others before him, rather...

Studying the Art of War: Military Books Known to American Officers and Their French Counterparts During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

This essay seeks first to identify published military books available to eighteenth-century American officers and their French counterparts. Second, it examines which among those titles were actually known to or owned by a number of said officers. Not surprisingly, the titles included classical military histories as well as contemporary histories and biographies. In addition, practical treatises such as drill manuals and mathematical treatises on artillery, fortification, and strategy were popular. The study includes an annotated list of those books and identifies which among them can be found at the library of the Society of the Cincinnati.

A study of strategy implementation as expressed through Sun Tzu's principles of war

In currently facing dynamic environments, the tools of strategic management appear to be more and more important in improving the quality of decision‐making. Among the great Chinese wisdoms, Sun Tzu's, The Art of War, is probably the oldest military book in Chinese with principles which Sun Tzu advocated, still very valuable in business operations today. Thus, this study tends to evaluate the relationships among Sun Tzu's principles of situation appraisal, strategy implementation, and strategic control through an empirical study. Furthermore, how the levels of adoption on Sun Tzu's principles of situation appraisal, strategy implementation, and strategic control impact on a firm acquiring its key success factors is also verified. The results show that the adoption levels of Sun Tzu's principles on situation appraisal, strategy implementation, and strategic control are highly interrelated. The adoption levels are positively related to the firm acquiring its key success factors, as well.

Modernizing China's Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects. By David Shambaugh. [Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003. xxviii+374 pp. £24.95; $34.95. ISBN 0-520-22507-4.

The field of PLA studies is at a crossroads. Whereas specialists once pored over the few pages of a general political department Work Bulletin for hints of the inner workings of the military, experts now struggle with trying to drink from a fire hose of information. PLA publishing houses, cut off from subsidy and desperate to generate revenue, are flooding the market with military books of varying levels of authoritativeness, and the Internet is awash with the all-too-familiar flotsam and jetsam of truths, half-truths, and outright fiction. These new sources have overwhelmed a field with too few advanced linguists, and with only the most rudimentary tools and frameworks with which to process and assess this information.