Jules Roy is the foremost French military writer of the twentieth century, and, after Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the chief practitioner, along with Joseph Kessel, of a peculiarly modern genre, the literature of aviation. He is an outstanding example of the moraliste, that is, a writer who studies human behavior and mores, either in the personal or the impersonal mode, and proposes values and standards. Principally a novelist, he also composes plays, two of which were successful on the Paris stage; dozens of articles, some of the most important of which are collected in L'Homme à l'épée (The Man with the Sword, 1957; enlarged edition, 1970) and Autour du drame (Concerning the Drama, 1961); poems (especially at the outset of his career); and several biographical, historical, and polemical volumes and personal essays. During his military career, which spanned a quarter-century, he saw profound changes in warfare...