The problem with being american (for those who were born american) is that we are so immersed in american-ism that we can no longer see what it is. Someone who is born elsewhere and consciously decides to become "american" has a unique perspective - one that is useful for the rest of us americans to read.

Ted Morgan was born a noble french aristocrat, son of a Free French hero ("Ted Morgan" is an anagram of his french name, de Gramont). However, he found himself increasingly estranged from the closed world of the post-war french nobility, and increasingly drawn to the open culture of the United States. This book describes why, and how he came to make the break with his old life.

As Morgan says in his book: "All americans are either revolutionaries, or descended from revolutionaries." While his turn of phrase makes enjoyable reading (Morgan won a Pulitzer prize for news reporting under deadline), his insights go deeper. This book acts in some way as a mirror held so we can contemplate our own reflection. Those of us who were born here can get some unique insight from this insider/outsider view.

Have not read the book but as for the title another author forgets about the 5th armed service - the United States Coast Guard - which has been involved in every major conflict. In fact, during WWII most landing craft were piloted by Coasties. Funny that they rate the CAP as a military service per the title. I'll give it a couple stars as I'm sure it does a fine job of showing other service patches.

From the title and the description, I was expecting a comprehensive guide to patches from all service branches. In fact, this book is heavily weighted in favor of Army patches. There are no patches for individual ships, submarines, or aviation units (i.e., squadrons). If you are interested in such patches you must look elsewhere. The patches are clearly reproduced, but I would have appreciated more information on each patch: unless you are already familiar with an individual unit, it's difficult to determine when the patches were in use.

this book was an interesting collection of military patches with many colorful illustrations of various shoulder sleeve insignia.

my main interest was in us army airborne patches, and i was disappointed that more of that type were not shown. i have later learned that several errors were made in the collection.

i would have enjoyed seeing more narrative text to explain what some of the patches represented, when they were worn, and how the authors came to discover the existence of many of the patches shown.

i feel i got my money's worth with the book, but will continue to look for a definitive source about the subject of airborne patches.

If you have gotten much pleasure reading the works of W.Somerset Maugham as I have, you should not waste your money trying to find a copy of this book, as I did. Simply put, Morgan's work is a very well researched, poorly written,extremely negative account of Maugham's life. The entire book consists primarily of personal and professional attacks of every type imaginable on Maugham. Absolutely the worst biography I've ever read.