Allard's on page 6. Wow.
4 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inevitable General, Inevitable Best-Seller, February 4, 2012
By C. Kenneth Allard "Former MSNBC Military Analyst" (San Antonio TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: All In: The Education of General David Petraeus (Hardcover)
Despite being a regular reviewer for the New York Journal of Books, I was pre-empted from assessing ALL IN because David Petraeus has been a colleague, fellow soldier and loyal friend for almost 30 years. Having lived small parts of that history with him, I found it impossible to put this book down. A delightful surprise was discovering Paula Broadwell's superb and effortless writing. She admires her subject but never confuses the last briefing chart (of which there are several) with a narrative that makes you feel like an eye-witness. Ms Broadwell's definitive biography shows exactly why many of my contemporaries regard David Petraeus as the best soldier of our generation - and possibly the greatest American general since George C. Marshall. You need not agree with the twin insanities of fighting in Afghanistan or leading the CIA (where there are marginally fewer landmines but equally intense tribal rivalries) to appreciate why many of us believe Petraeus still deserves his fifth star.
For once, the usual book-jacket hype by luminaries is not only well-deserved but even understated. Reading it, you might even echo the famous closing reflection from Michener's The Bridges of Too-Ri, "Where do we get such men?" Or, with Paula Broadwell, such superb soldier-scholars who just happen to be women.
COL Ken Allard, USA (Ret.)
Wish COL Allard and more of his fellow experts in Corporate McPravda would read and review "
JFK and Vietnam" or "
Oswald and the CIA" by John M. Newman.
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