Book excerpt: The Combatant Commands Informational Series is designed to identify the roles, functions, responsibilities and Area of Responsibility (AOR) of the unified commands. Its primary focus is to introduce potential joint staff officers to the commands. Additionally, this research should also prove valuable to the military education system as curriculum support material, specifically, Air Command and Staff College's Strategic Structures and Distance Learning programs. This year's research centered on three commands, USCENTCOM, USSOUTHCOM, and USSPACECOM. Students conducted extensive research including interviews with command staff and country experts, library searches and 'surfed' the Internet. Researchers then consolidated their work into three 'ToolBooks' - hypertext documents which present graphics and text in an interactive, easily accessible format enhancing comprehension and retention of complex information. The long-range goal of this project is for each unified command to be covered by a ToolBook for students and JSOs to refer to for basic, knowledge-level information. This 'encyclopedia' will be transferred to CD-ROM for distribution to students, faculty, the joint staff and unified commands. To demonstrate an alternative distribution option and 'leading edge' technology, the USCENTCOM ToolBook was also translated into a format readable by any industry-standard Internet World-Wide-Web browser, making it potentially accessible to the millions of Internet users worldwide.