DJ @ 2008-12-02
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$15.00 |
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Finally a warrior writes about what really happened and the key life lessons we can all take away: `Always listen to the guy on the ground', `When in doubt, develop the situation', and my favorite, `It's not reality unless it's shared' are all embedded in these amazing real-world mission story's. His underlying premise is that the key to understanding the complex world around us is our ability to recognize, understand, and adapt to the underlying patterns that drive the behavior of everything around us, which I wholeheartedly agree with. But what really amazed about this book about patterns, is how many patterns there are in the book itself. Just about everything he writes about--from his childhood 'bombing cars' to his walk across the Gettysburg battlefield is linked to some other event, mission, or lesson somewhere else in the book. I read this book over the weekend, and I wrote so many notes in the margins on the patterns that I discovered, that I'm now going back through for the third time. He says things like `don't charge the machine-gun nest, go around it', and 'treat life like a movie, not a snapshot', that I have always believed in myself, but had never been able to put in words or phrases before. Pete writes about Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and yes, Montana, with a fresh narrative that makes each mission come to life in a unique never before heard way, while also making what actually happened much easier to understand. The chapter on Gorrilla (not a spelling error) Warfare in Bosnia is magnificent, as was his short story on what we should really have learned from John Walker Lindh--why wasn't this ever covered in the press? The chapter on Ali Mohamed (the wayward terrorist) should be read by our new President, so he doesn't get burned like his predecessors did. Finally, I want to point out that the maps in this book set a whole new standard for battlefield maps. Google earth technology was used to create maps that make you feel like you are flying over the battlefield with a birds-eye view of everything going on below. This may be the best book I've ever read.