MAKING THE CORPS.

By Thomas E. Ricks. Scribner. 324 pp. $24

For a great democracy that is also a global superpower—and whose continued dominance demands a superior military force— the relationship between soldiers and society is a matter of singular importance. Although recent developments have suggested that the American civil-military relationship is far from healthy, most Americans continue to take it for granted. This readable and provocative book should change that.

Despite his job title—Pentagon correspondent of the Wall Street Journal—Ricks understands that the real story of today’s military is not the generals in Washington but the sergeants and captains in the field. Parris Island, the Marine Corps base in South Carolina that provides the principal setting for Ricks’s tale, is about as remote from the corridors of power as you can get. Making the Corps tells the story of Platoon 3086: a group of 63 young men delivered by bus to Parris Island in early-morning darkness, each to discover if he has what it takes to become a United States Marine. Step by painful step, Ricks follows the progress of these recruits through boot camp, an arduous, disorienting, sometimes brutal 11week rite of passage that some will fail to navigate. He tracks those who make it into the Fleet, where they struggle to adapt the standards of boot camp to those prevailing in the "real" Marine Corps. Finally, Ricks evaluates the efforts of these rookie marines to come to terms with the world outside the Corps, a world that Parris Island taught them to disdain.

In telling his story, Ricks introduces the reader to a fascinating cast of characters: the hierarchy of senior leaders who design boot camp with the explicit intention of stripping each new recruit of his civilian identity; the drill instructors who, as gods, tyrants, mentors, role models, and father figures, preside over the daily process of transforming recruits into marines; and, above all, the recruits themselves, whom Ricks portrays with empathy and respect. Today’s marine volunteers come, for the most part, from among the have-nots of society. They enlist not for love of country but out of something like desperation, reacting to boredom, failure, minor scrapes with the law, and love affairs gone awry. Yet each yearns to be somebody. To enter the exclusive brotherhood of the marines is to be somebody very special indeed.

Boot camp is the price of admission. Recruits pay the price less by attaining the technical skills of the professional soldier than by embracing without reservation the ethos of the Corps. Central to that ethos are values such as honor, courage, and selflessness that, according to senior marines, have all but vanished from American society. The essence of boot camp, in other words, is cultural indoctrination.

Here lies the author’s true achievement. Making the Corps exposes the gaping cultural divide that separates soldiers, marines in particular, from the rest of today’s society. Others have noted that, in the aftermath of Vietnam, American elites turned their backs on the military, a process ratified by the end of the draft. A generation later, the armed services, still nursing Vietnam-induced resentments of their own, return that contempt with interest. Professing to be repelled by a society they view as undisciplined, corrupt, and selfish, soldiers today cultivate a self-image of moral superiority over those they serve.