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A History of Government Contracting (2nd ed.), by James F. Nagle (Washington, DC: The George Washington University Press, Government Contract Program, 1999, paperback, ISBN: 0-93516569-X, 605 pages, US$65.00).
The book, written by an expert in government contracts, examines the evolution of public contracting, beginning during the French and Indian Wars and continuing to the present. Drawing extensively upon major events in U.S. weapons acquisition, the author presents efforts of the federal government to reorganize contracting agencies, reform the contracting process and search for a proper government-contractor relationship.
The book contains 23 chapters, each of which describes an important event, a turning point, or a trend in military contracting, civilian contracting, the contracting process or a contracting reform. Military contracting serves as the main focus for 17 chapters. The federal government has issued contracts to acquire everything from 12-pounders cannons used in the Revolutionary War to today's intercontinental ballistic long-range missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction. Military contracting commands the center stage of American federal procurement, and military enterprise has been vitally important to America's status as an industrial and world power. The relationship between military contracting and nation-building has been recognized in various historians' works including that of Geoffrey Perret, "A Country Made by Wars: From Revolution to Vietnam: The Story of America's Rise to Power."1
If war has been the Genesis of technological invention, then military contracts have been the driving force of industrial development since the birth of the country. When the Civil War began, Christopher Spencer was learning the rifle production trade. However, as soon as the Navy's acquisition of 700 breechloading repeating carbines and rifles which he patented in 1861, he established a company, the Spencer Rifle Manufacturing Company (p. 184). Expanding its production capacity to meet government demand, his company had sold to the government over 12,400 Spencer rifles, 94,200 Spencer carbines and 58,238,000 Spencer cartridges by the war's end (p. 185).
In addition, wars have served as a tough test for the efficiency and effectiveness of the contracting system. At the beginning of every war, a gap between demand and supply of war materials occurs resulting in the issuance of a great number of contracts, often poorly conceived and constructed. These contracts often result in chaos and prolong going-on...