America’s all-volunteer army took shape in the 1970s, in the wake of widespread opposition to the draft. Abandoning compulsory conscription, it wrestled with how to attract and retain soldiers―a task made more difficult by the military’s plummeting prestige after Vietnam. The army solved the problem, Jennifer Mittelstadt shows, by promising to take care of its own―the more than ten million Americans who volunteered for active duty after 1973 and their families. While the United States dismantled its civilian welfare system in the 1980s and 1990s, army benefits continued to expand.

Introduction: the Army takes care of its own -- Army benefits in a free market era -- Is military service a job? -- The threat of a social welfare institution -- Supporting the military in Reagan's America -- Army wives demand support -- Securing Christian family values -- A turn to self-reliance -- Outsourcing solider and family support -- Epilogue: Army welfare at war in the twenty-first century.