Military historian Kuehn (US Army Command and General Staff College, Kansas) argues that the US Navy's contribution to victory in the Pacific Theater of World War II can only be understood by studying how the General Board of the US Navy constructed the treaty navy during the period between the wars. Challenging the conventional view, he says that the naval arms limitations that the US agreed to after World War I made the Navy more not less prepared when hostilities broke out. The study began as his Ph.D. dissertation at Kansas State University in 2004. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)