Overview

The Marine Corps has always considered itself a breed apart. Since 1775, America's smallest armed service has been suspicious of outsiders and deeply loyal to its traditions. Marines believe in nothing more strongly than the Corps' uniqueness and superiority, and this undying faith in its own exceptionalism is what has made the Marines one of the sharpest, swiftest tools of American military power. Along with unapologetic self-promotion, a strong sense of identity has enabled the Corps to exert a powerful influence on American politics and culture. Aaron O'Connell focuses on the period from World War II to Vietnam, when the Marine Corps transformed itself from America's least respected to its most elite armed force. He describes how the distinctive Marine culture played a role in this ascendancy. Venerating sacrifice and suffering, privileging the collective over the individual, Corps culture was saturated with romantic and religious overtones that had enormous marketing potential in a postwar America energized by new global responsibilities. Capitalizing on this, the Marines curried the favor of the nation's best reporters, befriended publishers, courted Hollywood and Congress, and built a public relations infrastructure that would eventually brand it as the most prestigious military service in America. But the Corps' triumphs did not come without costs, and O'Connell writes of those, too, including a culture of violence that sometimes spread beyond the battlefield. And as he considers how the Corps' interventions in American politics have ushered in a more militarized approach to national security, O'Connell questions its sustainability.

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Reviews

"O'Connell offers an excellent analysis of how the marines became the Marines.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" ""A brilliant synthesis of military and cultural history. Underdogs will do for Marine Corps history what Peter Karsten's The Naval Aristocracy did for naval history."" -- ""Ronald H. Spector, author of In the Ruins of Empire"" ""O'Connell offers an excellent analysis of how the marines became the Marines."" -- ""Publishers Weekly"" ""This insightful cultural history is recommended for those interested in US military history and modern US history."" -- ""Library Journal"""

Author Information

Aaron B. O'Connell is lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and the author of Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps. Most recently, he was associate professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He has received the Distinguished Dissertation in American History Prize from Yale University and a Marine Corps Heritage Foundation research grant, among other honors. Danny Campbell is an Earphones Award-winning narrator and an actor who has appeared in CBS' The Guardian, the films A Pool, a Fool, and a Duel and Greater Than Gravity, and in over twenty-five commercials. He is a company member of the Independent Shakespeare Company in Los Angeles and is an adjunct faculty member at Santa Monica College.

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