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The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 1775-2003. By Janice E. McKenney. Washington: Center of Military History, 2007. ISBN 978-0-16-077155-6. Tables. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 394.
The two principal elements of ground combat power are fire and maneuver, and field artillery is the primary source of the former. Yet, artillery has always received relatively short shrift from historians and popular military writers because of its highly technical nature. Compared to the seemingly more dynamic and glamorous maneuver branches - infantry, cavalry, armor, and more recendy aviation - artillery is all too often ignored as being some indecipherable combination of black magic and arithmetic.
Janice McKenney s study of the evolution on the U.S. Army's Field Artillery branch is long overdue. Until now, most of the key information on how...