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Published Jan 2012
352 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
General David Petraeus bears the mantle of Grant, Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and Eisenhower. In All In, military expert Paula Broadwell examines Petraeus's career, his intellectual development as a commander, and his impact as a transformative leader in the military, to give us a deeper understanding of the greatest soldier of our time than ever before.
Broadwell embedded with the commander and his subordinates on the front lines of fighting and at the epicenter of the strategic command in Afghanistan to chronicle the education of this American general as it is brought to bear in the terrible crucible of war. All In uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Petraeus and his top officers and soldiers to tell the inside story of this commander's war from every vantage point, with particular emphasis on viewing the war through Petraeus's eyes.
When Petraeus assumed command in Afghanistan in July 2010, the conflict looked as bleak as at any moment in America's nine years on the ground there. Petraeus's defining idea - counterinsurgency - was immediately put to its most difficult test: the hard lessons learned during the surge in Iraq were to be applied in a radically different theater. All In traces the origins and applications in Afghanistan of the principles of counterinsurgency through the commands of Lieutenant Colonel David Fivecoat, Petraeus's aide in Bosnia and during the invasion of Iraq, and that of other officers who have served with him over the years. Broadwell also examines Petraeus's evolution as a counterinsurgent from his education at West Point in the wake of Vietnam to his earlier service in El Salvador and Iraq.
In this exclusive-access account, Broadwell ultimately appraises Petraeus's impact on the entire U.S. military: thanks to this most remarkable soldier, war in the near future will be fought as a complex blend of offense, defense, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and interagency intelligence operations. As he leaves Afghanistan for his new post at the CIA, Petraeus's theory of warfare will redefine our military and our intelligence community for decades to come.
"The narrative is difficult to track because of shifting time elements and sporadic sections of battleground details, but Broadwell provides a first-rate education about the modern American military for outsiders." - Kirkus Reviews
"Relying on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Petraeus and his top officers and soldiers, Broadwell tells the story of one of the top military leaders of our time." - Library Journal
"General Petraeus is one of the most important Americans of our time, in or out of uniform. This riveting, insider's account of his life and education is at once instructive and inspiring." - Tom Brokaw, Anchor and Managing Editor, NBC Nightly News; author of The Greatest Generation
"This majestic biography will set the standard for all future works about General Petraeus. With superb narrative skill, Broadwell simultaneously provides an intimate look at Petraeus the man, a fascinating account of modern warfare, and an elegant study of leadership." - Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time and Team of Rivals
"Teddy Roosevelt once said that it is not enough to be intelligent; a leader must also be honest and fearless. In General David Petraeus (himself a T.R. fan), America has been fortunate to have a soldier-scholar who is all three. Paula Broadwell, soldier-scholar in her own right, tells the Petraeus story masterfully, providing especially rich detail and insight into his Afghanistan mission. This book helps us understand how Petraeus has become the living legend he is." - David Gergen, Director, Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership; author of Eyewitness to Power
This information about All In was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paula Broadwell is a research associate at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership and a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. She spent much of the past year in Afghanistan as an embedded author, building upon her previous two-year pursuit of a doctoral dissertation: a study in transformational leadership and organizational innovation influenced by U.S. Army General David Petraeus. To learn more, visit her website at www.paulabroadwell.com.
Vernon Loeb is metro editor at The Washington Post. He worked with Paula Broadwell on All In: The Education of David Petraeus, for 16 months from the safety of his home office as she embedded with forces in Afghanistan and traveled the world reporting on Gen. David Petraeus. Loeb joined Team Broadwell after his own Petraeus experience in 2003 when, as Pentagon correspondent for The Post, he embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul under Petraeus's command.
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