Serving America's Veterans: A Reference Handbook

In this authoritative handbook, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense lays out the infrastructural, administrative, and health care challenges facing the Veterans Administration, policymakers, and our veterans themselves.

Serving America's Veterans: A Reference Handbook comes from an impeccable source―former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations, and Logistics Lawrence J. Korb. Korb and his team of experts survey, analyze, and evaluate the infrastructural conditions, administrative and health care service challenges, policies, and politics affecting veterans affairs in the United States. They overview the historical context of contemporary veterans affairs and project the capabilities of the Veterans Administration to cope with the needs of active, reserve, and retired veterans. Most critically, they provide practical prescriptions and policy recommendations to address veterans' many, pressing needs.

The full spectrum of veterans issues is examined: changing personnel policies in the armed forces; unprecedented levels of National Guard and Reserve mobilization; societal reintegration and funding adequacy when the professional military is a relatively small fraction of the U.S. electorate; rising costs of medical technology; and the growing proportion of veterans with conditions requiring protracted rehabilitation or lifelong intensive care.

Lawrence J. Korb, is Senior Fellow for Defense Information at the Center for American Progress. He served as Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Director of the Center for Public Policy Education at the Brookings Institution, Vice President of the Raytheon Company, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations, and Logistics.

Sean E. Duggan is a research associate for national security at the Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C.

Peter M. Juul is a research associate at the Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C., specializing in military affairs.

Max A. Bergmann is a research associate at the Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C.