Robert L. O'Connell – författare

“A delicious blend of insight, wit and history, Team America is a punch-packed introduction to four great military minds and the zeitgeist that produced them.” —Wall Street Journal“Robert O’Connell has written a rollicking, insightful story of some particularly American heroes.” —Evan Thomas, author of Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the WorldFrom national bestselling author and acclaimed military historian Robert L. O’Connell, a dynamic history of four military leaders whose extraordinary leadership and strategy led the United States to success during World War I and beyond.By the first half of the twentieth century, technology had transformed warfare into a series of intense bloodbaths in which the line between soldiers and civilians was obliterated, resulting in the deaths of one hundred million people. During this period, four men exhibited unparalleled military leadership that led the United States victoriously through two World Wars: Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, George Marshall, and Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower; or, as bestselling author Robert O’Connell calls them, Team America.O’Connell captures these men’s unique charisma as he chronicles the path each forged—from their upbringings to their educational experiences to their storied military careers—experiences that shaped them into majestic leaders who would play major roles in saving the free world and preserving the security of the United States in times of unparalleled danger. O’Connell shows how the lives of these men—all born within the span of a decade—twisted around each other like a giant braid in time. Throughout their careers, they would use each other brilliantly in a series of symbiotic relationships that would hold increasingly greater consequences.At the end of their star-studded careers (twenty-four out of a possible twenty-five), O’Connell concludes that what set Team America apart was not their ability to wield the proverbial sword, but rather their ability to plot strategy, give orders, and inspire others. The key ingredients to their success was mental agility, a gravitas that masked their intensity, and an almost intuitive understanding of how armies in the millions actually functioned and fought. Without the leadership of these men, O’Connell makes clear, the world we know would be vastly different.

In this provocative book, Robert O'Connell examines the role and significance of weapons from the dawn of human history to the present, and the attempts of western civilization to come to terms with the grim results of its own inventiveness. This is not simply a history of the technology of weapons. It integrates the evolution of human society with the development of weapons and strategy into a single, coherent story. While primarily historical in his approach, O'Connell also draws upon anthropology, sociology, biology, and literature in his effort to explain certain recurring phenomena of warfare: the human need to dehumanize the enemy; arms races involving weapons which have developed beyond the point of utility; or the ideal of heroism rendered obsolete by deadly new technologies.

In this provocative book, Robert O'Connell examines the role and significance of weapons from the dawn of human history to the present, and the attempts of western civilization to come to terms with the grim results of its own inventiveness. This is not simply a history of the technology of weapons. It integrates the evolution of human society with the development of weapons and strategy into a single, coherent story. While primarily historical in his approach, O'Connell also draws upon anthropology, sociology, biology, and literature in his effort to explain certain recurring phenomena of warfare: the human need to dehumanize the enemy; arms races involving weapons which have developed beyond the point of utility; or the ideal of heroism rendered obsolete by deadly new technologies.

Awesome in size, immensely powerful and ingrained in the socio-economic and psychological structure of the U.S. Navy, the battleship served as chief guardsman of territory, reigning as monarch of the sea. For two hundred years it played an essential role in U.S. military affairs, yet as Robert L O'Connell demonstrates, the battleship was never actually an effective weapon of war - even before advances in submarine and aircraft technology rendered it impractical. Battleships have never played an actively important role in the outcome of any modern war but they have continued to be resurrected and refurbished, capturing the hearts of the public with their awesome beauty and size, and the myopic devotion of the military with their patently inefficient presence. Sacred Vessels tells the story of the evolution of the battleship. It is a cautionary tale about the often unacknowledged influence of human faith, culture and tradition and of the exceedingly important, costly and, supposedly rational, process, of nations arming themselves for war.

`Accurst be he that first invented war', wrote Christopher Marlowe - a declaration that most of us would take as a literary, not literal, construction. But in this sweeping overview of the rise of civilization, Robert O'Connell finds that war is indeed an invention - an institution that arose due to very specific historical circumstances, an institution that now verges on extinction.In Ride of the Second Horseman, O'Connell probes the distant human past to show how and why war arose. He begins with a definition that distinguishes between war and mere feuding: war involves group rather than individual issues, political or economic goals, and direction by some governmental structure, carried out with the intention of lasting results. With this definition, he finds that ants are the only other creatures that conduct it - battling other colonies for territory and slaves. But ants, unlike humans, are driven by their genes; in humans, changes in our culture and subsistence patterns, not our genetic hardware, brought the rise of organized warfare. O'Connell draws on anthropology and archeology to locate the rise of war sometime after the human transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to agriculture, when society split between farmers and pastoralists. Around 5500 BC, these pastoralists initiated the birth of war with raids on Middle Eastern agricultural settlements. The farmers responded by ringing their villages with walls, setting off a process of further social development, intensified combat, and ultimately the rise of complex urban societies dependent upon warfare to help stabilize what amounted to highly volatile population structures, beset by frequent bouts of famine and epidemic disease. In times of overpopulation, the armies either conquered new lands or self-destructed, leaving fewer mouths to feed. In times of underpopulation, slaves were taken to provide labor. O'Connell explores the histories of the civilizations of ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Assyria, China, and the New World, showing how war came to each and how it adapted to varying circumstances. On the other hand, societies based on trade employed war much more selectively and pragmatically. Thus, Minoan Crete, long protected from marauding pastoralists, developed a wealthy mercantile society marked by unmilitaristic attitudes, equality between men and women, and a relative absence of class distinctions. In Assyria, by contrast, war came to be an end in itself, in a culture dominated by male warriors.Despite the violence in the world today, O'Connell finds reason for hope. The industrial revolution broke the old patterns of subsistence: war no longer serves the demographic purpose it once did. Fascinating and provocative, Ride of the Second Horseman offers a far-reaching tour of human history that suggests the age-old cycle of war may now be near its end.

Writing critically about something you have come to regard with affection must provoke mixed emotions. As I learned more and more about the modern battleship's shortcomings, I found myself, like so many before me, falling under its spell. I have traveled hundreds of miles to visit these wonderful ships, reverently preserved like a necklace of talismans around our nation's coasts. I have stood in awe under the great guns, wondering what it must have been like to hear them fire. Perhaps it is true that their sound and fury signified very little in terms of actual destructive power. But most people thought they did, and that was and still is important. Besides, for the most part, we were proud of those ships. Now we live in a time of weapons so terrible that we must actually hide them-beneath the ground and below the surface of the sea. But, like battleships, they keep the peace precisely because of what others think they can do. All things being equal, who would not prefer the dreadnoughts?

Sacred Vessels is an irreverent account of the modern battleship and its place in American naval history from the sinking of the coal-fired Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 to the deployment of the cruise missile-armed Missouri in the Persian Gulf in 1991. With provocative insight and wit, Robert O'Connell conclusively demonstrates that the vaunted battleship was in fact never an effective weapon of war, even before developments in aircraft and submarine technology sealed its doom. The worlds navies failed to recognize the full implications of rapid technological change at the turn of the century but were enthralled by the revolutionary design of the HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1903. Nations raced to build and deploy the biggest, the fastest, and the greatest possible number of battleships, usually at the expense of much more effective forms of naval force. Dreadnoughts became the international currency of great power status, subject to the same anxious accountancy as nuclear weapons today. Their awesome beauty captured the public s imagination and won the unquestioning devotion of naval officers everywhere. When war came in 1914, the world held its breath in anticipation of a modern-day Trafalgar, but dreadnoughts everywhere avoided battle, and when they were forced to fight, the results were inconclusive or irrelevant. In spite of this display of impotence, the world's shipyards continued to turn out the great vessels. The sinking of the heart of the U.S. battlefleet at Pearl Harbor–an event that finally forced the United States into World War II–ironically also began to shake the U.S. Navy free from its infatuation with the dreadnought in favor of the more practical charms of the aircraft carrier. Still, sheer faith in the battleship ensured that it would live to fight again, this time with even more questionable results. In fact, says O'Connell, battleships have never played an important role in the outcome of any modern war, but they have continued to be resurrected and refurbished–even garnished with nuclear weapons–right up to the present day. Television images of the Missouri and the Wisconsin firing on the shores of Iraq in 1991 were not just a glimpse of an anachronism: We were witnessing, with a lingering sense of awe, the last gasp of a fire-breathing behemoth that in actuality was all but toothless from the moment of its conception. Sacred Vessels is more than the unmasking of a false idol of naval history. It is a cautionary tale about the often unacknowledged influence of human faith, culture, and tradition on the exceedingly important, costly, and supposedly rational process of nations arming themselves for war.