"Almost a blasphemer" : citizen-soldiers as neighbors in the early United States

"A blind lottery" : discipline and justice in the old navy

"A lawful going home" : conflict and coercion in the Jacksonian military

"I won't be quiet" : force and consent in the Civil War

"Amenable to military law" : policing civilians with military authority

"All that savored of the overseer" : black soldiers in the nineteenth century

"Maniacs or wild beasts" : military justice and American expansion

"We return fighting" : black soldiers in the Jim Crow era

"An emergency condition" : World War I and the first debate over reform

"We've got to live with this the rest of our lives" : the deadly justice of World War II

"You cannot maintain discipline by administering justice" : the Cold War and the UCMJ

"My god, he's firing into the ditch" : Vietnam, the hollow army, and the end of the cold war

Epilogue: the living past : the court-martial in contemporary America.