Sexual assault in the American military surged in the last two years, driven almost entirely by a 50 percent increase in assaults on women in uniform, according to a survey released on Thursday by the Defense Department. That was an increase of 38 percent from the previous survey in The issue took on added political visibility in March when Senator Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, said publicly that she had been raped by a superior officer and had suffered numerous sexual assaults while serving in the Air Force. She has opposed shifting authority over sexual assault cases away from commanders.

Gregory Buckley Jr. He urged his son to tell his superiors. Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population.

What Soldiers Do is not a conventional history. It will provoke heated discussion and critical responses from those who are made uncomfortable by its arguments, and those arguments merit engagement both by those who agree and by those who might not want to face the evidence that the author has gathered so expertly. The prose is bracingly clear, the argument is free of sensationalist exaggeration, and, most important, it is persuasive. This remarkable book deserves to be widely read. It stands as a corrective to all the best-selling celebratory renderings of World War II in the United States over the past quarter century.