Examining the writings of professional military thinkers such as Ivan Bloch together with works by relative military amateurs such as H.G. Wells, Echevarria (director of research at the Army War College) compares how pre-World War I thinkers imagined the future of warfare. After painting portraits of general speculative thinking at the time and the actual status of warfare in broad strokes, he compares writings about land, sea, and air warfare, finding that the amateurs generally were better at predicting long-term trends in warfare but were not as good as the professional military thinkers in predicting short-term tactical developments. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)