A useful guide for anticipating the complexities of the modern battlefield.
A retired four-star Marine Corps general examines how wars can be lost before they’ve even begun.
In his latest collaboration with co-author Koltz (Leading the Charge: Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield to the Boardroom, 2009, etc.), Zinni brings his five decades of military experience to bear and draws on lessons from past wars to set out vital preconditions for successful military intervention. No matter the provocation for war, we must respond first with sound analysis. Intelligence experts must not only gather the pertinent data and define the problem, but also provide the context necessary for sound decision-making. Second, responsible executives must look at all the options, the policy implications and consequences of any decision. Here, styles may vary—Zinni cites Eisenhower and Truman as models—and depend on a variety of factors, but the president must find a way to fully comprehend the implications of any decision to use force. Third, we must design and implement a dynamic strategy that synchronizes the efforts of our political leadership, policy developers and operational commanders. Throughout, Zinni touches on a variety of topics: the critical role played by any secretary of defense (thumbs up for William Cohen, down for Donald Rumsfeld); the need for strong legal, ethical and moral grounds anchoring any narrative arguing for war; the fashioning of a military force adaptable to the mission; the proper role of contractors, the National Guard and Reserves; the necessity of meritocratic selection of combat leaders; the need for overhauling national security structures, some of which date back to the 1940s; the need to update our regional and global partnerships; and the importance of words and ideas, “the battle of the narrative,” to accomplishing our goals. If today’s wars too often “end” not in victory but instead with an exasperated, “How the hell did we get here?” it’s likely due to the fact that we have ignored too many of the issues Zinni raises.
A useful guide for anticipating the complexities of the modern battlefield.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-137-27938-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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