"[A] highly statistical but thankfully lucid study... [The authors] find that non-veteran civilian elites are more likely to advocate the use of force than either military elites or civilian leaders with military experience... The pattern holds historically. The authors consider a total of 111 instances from 1816 to 1992."--Chronicle of Higher Education "Feaver and Gelpi offer important insights into the character of civil-military relations in the U.S. and into its effects on the nature of U.S. foreign policy... [A]n important work whose findings have wide-ranging policy implications."--Spencer D. Bakich, Virginia Quarterly Review "Feaver and Gelpi's intriguing and well-executed study provides a welcome contribution to scholarship in this area. In it, the authors address a subset of provocative issues within the broader study of American civil-military relations."--Risa A. Brooks, Review of Politics