How has America handled the problem of captured enemies? Doyle (history, Franciscan Univ.; Voices from Captivity) unravels the various complex strains of enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) treatment, covering the U.S. military experience from the American Revolution to the present. He relies heavily on the moral high ground, a concept that sounds simple but involves difficult tradeoffs among morality, pragmatism, and situationalism. The moral and historical issues here will be of interest to military students, historians, political scientists, ethicists, and similar scholars. Heavily annotated, with a lengthy bibliography, this strongly recommended title should be read along with Paul Springer's America's Captives.—Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS

In his well-documented survey, Springer (leadership & strategy, Air Command & Staff Coll.) argues that America has improvised and haphazardly managed its treatment of prisoners of war (POWs), from the thousands of British prisoners exchanged on a rank-for-rank basis during the Revolution to the Guantánamo prisoners in legal limbo today. In addressing a predictable problem in ad hoc ways, the United States has reckoned with issues of humanitarianism, military expediency, retaliation, the rule of law, and public perception. Springer uses the Revolution and the Civil War to highlight the difficulties; in both cases one side was reluctant to recognize the rights of POWs for fear of legitimizing the existence of the rebel state—a problem that persists with today's nonstate combatants. Neither Springer nor Doyle is an easy or popular read, but these complementary titles are mandatory for all interested readers—students, scholars, and informed lay persons. [Watch for this reviewer's next military history roundup in LJ 4/1/10.—Ed.]—Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib. Fort Leavenworth, KS