This is a book about revolutions, told by a medical man at the forefront of those battles, many still in progress, that have affected the lives of millions. Termed a "stormy petrel" of his profession by a great university, he was a major player in revolutionary changes in the treatment of the mentally ill; the medical approach to the disease of alcoholism; the unraveling of the methods used by Communist tyrants to enslave nearly a third of the earth's peoples, including some of our own; and, working within the labyrinth of power that is the Pentagon, assuring that those who serve the nation in battle, if wounded, have better than a 97% chance to survive their wounds: unprecedented in the history of war. This is a book about revolutionary changes in our world in the century just ended, that will continue in the new one ahead. Dr. William Mayer is a citizen-physician-soldier who, often at great professional (and at times, personal) risk, plunged into battles to change centuries-old ideas and practices having to do with insanity and the disease of alcoholism; methods of military training needed to respond to mind-altering tyrannies; and competition with our top war-fighters for the huge resources to assure our soldiers the finest medical care in history. These tales of changes that affect the lives of all in the free world are essential to the understanding of what can be accomplished by a free people, and what our adversaries would destroy. These revolutions touch the lives of all of us. They must be understood, and they must be remembered. For it is all too often that people forget these revolutions and history...thus are doomed to repeat them. Often with horrible consequences.
