In this brisk and assured fiction debut, set in a near-future
Washington, D.C., Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Ricks ) crafts
a taut, stimulating tale of contemporary military dilemmas, public and
personal. The central issue is the military's role in a democracy:
given an unpopular commander-in-chief and an even more unpopular
commitment of U.S. troops as peacekeepers in Afghanistan, what is a
self-respecting general to do? Ignore his military sense and say yes
to a bad political decision, like stolid, hard-drinking army
chief-of-staff John Shillingsworth? Or defy orders and attack the
position of the civilian government, like flashy, Custeresque B.Z.
Ames, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?