History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 4: Into the Missile Age, 1956-1960 byRobert J. WatsonReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1997), p. 158Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048302 .

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Recent Books

The Sword or the Scroll? Dilemmas of Religion and Military Service in Israel.

by Stuart a. cohen. Amsterdam:

Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997,

148 pp. $22.00.

A slender work that may go unnoticed,

which would be a pity. In remarkably brief compass, Cohen details the ways in

which Israel's religious community has

dealt with the Israel Defense Forces. In

so doing, he renders concise and lucid

accounts of Jewish just war theory (which

distnguishes between "obligatory" and

"optional" conflicts), the changing com

position of the IDF (in which religious youth now provide

a disproportionate

percentage of soldiers in elite units), and

the ways in which religious sensibilities can shape civil-military relations (as, for

example, when a group of rabbis urged

military disobedience in the face of orders to evacuate West Bank Jewish

settlements). A book of considerable

interest to students not only of Israel but

of military sociology generally.

Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria?

Torrid Diseases in a Temperate World.

by Robert s. DESOWiTz. NewYork:

W. W. Norton, 1997, 256 pp. $25.00. Not for the politically correct (Desowitz

stoudy defends the use of the term "tropical

diseases," occasionally derided as a bit of

European medical condescension) nor the

queasy of stomach (bloody urine, 45-foot

long tapeworms, and explosive diarrhea

figure prominently), this is a lively account

of how diseases have migrated from the

equator toward the poles. There may be

little new in Desowitz's conclusion that

increased travel, denser populations, and

the cunning of viruses maybe paving the

way for ghastly epidemics in the years to

come, but that does not take away from

the seriousness of the contention.

Largely anecdotal history, the book

provides an introduction considerably

less painful than the diseases described

in it to the ways in which humanity has

contracted, spread, and?with mixed

success?attempted to contain or crush

a terrifying array of diseases.

History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. 4: Into the Missile Age,

1956-1960. BY ROBERT J. WATSON.

Washington: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997,

1,024 PP- $50.00. The period 1956-60 comprises only five

short years, but few stretches of peacetime

history have had larger consequences for

American defense policy. The Eisenhower

administration's New Look (a shift in

emphasis to nuclear over conventional

weaponry), the crises in Eastern Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East, the

Gaither Report (a pivotal re-estimate of

the American nuclear posture in the

face of growing Soviet strength), and

the launching of the space and missile

races?are all covered in this massive

volume. Not least in importance is the

treatment of the 1958 reorganization of

the Defense Department, which pre

pared the way for Robert McNamara's

bold departures of the 1960s, and in

particular his radical strengthening of

the management role of the secretary of defense. Stolid prose and a

ponderous

pace do not diminish the value of this meticulous work of scholarship, which,

like others in the series, will probably never be displaced

as a standard work on

American defense policy.

[158] FOREIGN AFFAIRS -Volume 76 No. 6

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