Allan R. Millett is a specialist in the history of American military policy and twentieth-century wars. He is the founder of the internationally renowned military history program at the Ohio State University, where he is Mason Professor of History Emeritus. Millett currently directs the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, where he is the Ambrose Professor of History and serves as the Senior Military Advisor for the National World War II Museum. He is the author or co-author of eight books and co-editor of five others. Williamson Murray is Professor Emeritus of History at the Ohio State University. At present he is a defense consultant and commentator on historical and military subjects in Washington. He is co-editor of The Making of Peace (with Jim Lacey), The Past as Prologue (with Richard Hart Sinnreich), The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (with MacGregor Knox), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (with Allan R. Millett), and The Making of Strategy (with Alvin Bernstein and MacGregor Knox). He has edited, along with Richard Sinnreich and Jim Lacey, a volume entitled The Shaping of Grand Strategy (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

'Military Effectiveness is a first-rate historical analysis and commentary on the performance of nations at war in the most violent half-century in recorded human history. Drawing upon the considerable talents of such historians as Paul Kennedy, Holger H. Herwig, John Gooch, Earl F. Ziemke, Robert A. Doughty, Ronald Spector, Alvin D. Coox, MacGregor Knox, and Russell F. Weigley, Military Effectiveness offers a host of compelling … insights as to why 'some military forces succeed, while others fail'.' Jeffrey Record, Parameters

• Introduction: military effectiveness twenty years after Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett; 1. The effectiveness of military organizations Allan R. Millett, Williamson Murray, and Kenneth H. Watman; 2. Britain in the First World War Paul Kennedy; 3. The dynamics of necessity: German military policy during the First World War Holger H. Herwig; 4. American military effectiveness in the First World War Timothy K. Nenninger; 5. Italy during the First World War John Gooch; 6. The French Army in the First World War Douglas Porch; 7. Japan, 1914–18 Ian Nish; 8. Imperial Russia's forces at war David R. Jones; 9. Military effectiveness in the First World War Paul Kennedy.