Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution

Holm has updated this standard work, originally published in 1982, by adding material on the role of military women in the Grenada, Panama and Persian Gulf campaigns, along with a discussion of the bitter ongoing debate over the combat exclusion laws and draft policies relating to women. A retired Air Force major general, she chronicles women's struggle for a proper place in the armed services in the face of the sexist male leadership, which tolerated their presence as nurses and office clerks but did not take them seriously as soldiers until such breakthroughs as the introductions of weapons training in 1975 and the graduation of the first female cadet from West Point in 1980. Holm describes how Operation Desert Storm in 1991 became the catalyst for demands to review in practical terms the role of women in combat. She shines both as scholar and as journalist, and her account of how women have earned the right to be treated as ``members of the first team rather than as a protected subclass'' is eloquent, inspiring and richly informative. Director of Women in the Air Force (WAF) from 1965 to 1973, Holm was the first woman to attain two-star rank in the U.S. armed forces. (Oct.)