Download Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps AudioBook Free
The Sea Corps has always considered itself a breed aside. Since 1775, America's smallest armed service has been suspicious of outsiders and deeply loyal to its practices. Marines have confidence in nothing more strongly than the Corps' uniqueness and superiority, and this undying beliefs in its exceptionalism is exactly what has made the Marines one of the sharpest, swiftest tools of American armed service vitality. Along with unapologetic self-promotion, a solid sense of id has enabled the Corps to exert a robust effect on American politics and culture. Aaron O'Connell targets the time from World War II to Vietnam, when the Sea Corps transformed itself from America's least respected to its most top notch armed power. He describes how the distinctive Marine culture played a role in this ascendancy. Venerating sacrifice and hurting, privileging the collective over the average person, Corps culture was saturated with loving and religious overtones that possessed enormous marketing potential in a postwar America energized by new global responsibilities. Taking advantage of this, the Marines curried the favour of the nation's best reporters, befriended publishers, courted Hollywood and Congress, and built a pr infrastructure that would eventually brand it as the most prestigious armed service service in America. However the Corps' triumphs did not come without costs, and O'Connell writes of those, too, including a culture of assault that sometimes multiply beyond the battlefield. So that he considers how the Corps' interventions in American politics have ushered in a more militarized approach to countrywide security, O'Connell questions its sustainability.
