Book excerpt: This is a complete list of commissioned officers of the U.S. from the organization of the Army, September 29, 1789, to the year of the list's original publication in 1903, giving the officers' full names and showing their services as cadets and all services as officers or enlisted men, either in the regular or volunteer service. The heart of the work, Part II, an alphabetical listing of the officers, runs to some 60,000 entries. Each entry contains a brief paragraph on the officer giving his state or country where born, state from which originally appointed, date of induction, rank, date of discharge, promotions, medals, battles participated in, and, in about a fifth of the entries, date of death after leaving the Army. This monumental book is actually a lot more than a listing of the officer corps, as crucial as that is. Rather, it is a handbook on the men, events, and terminology of American military life during the years of its coverage.