KIRKUS REVIEW
You guessed it--Vietnam. Rolling out the rhetoric of total victory and military self-assuredness common a decade ago, Admiral Sharp, former Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, rails against politicians, academics, journalists, and just about everyone else without a uniform for disregarding his steady stream of advice during the war to employ maximum use of U.S. air power against Hanoi and Haiphong in favor of gradual escalation coupled with negotiation efforts. Contending that the Nixon-Kissinger Christmas bombings of 1972 ""will go down in history as a testimonial to the efficiency of air power,"" Sharp argues that this tactic should have been employed years earlier, and that once the decision to go to war is made, the only way to go is all the way. If this sounds like Goldwater's 1964 campaign, it differs only in that Sharp is not a proponent of nuclear weapons, claiming that they were not needed to do the job. The admiral hides his lack of political sensitivity behind an ungrounded belief that opposition to the war resulted from media distortions and the failure to pursue his policy of full-scale war effort. The military mind at parade rest.