Review Essay

How does one measure victory in combat operations? Is there a difference between victory ashore and victory at sea? These are certainly two fundamen- tal questions about the nature and character of war that are worthy of careful reflection, but too often they become lost among vague assumptions. The two scholars who have taken up the challenge in these two volumes represent differ- ent academic disciplines and each looks at the subject through quite a different lens. While each volume makes a substantial contribution to the literature by itself, when read together they provide an even more interesting and provocative basis for the readers of this journal to think about victory, both in the past and in the future