Eddie Reviews Kaplan

My copy hasn't even come in the mail, but Eddie seems to have already polished it off. Here is Eddie's conclusion at his relatively new blog, Hidden Unities. I think most Kaplan fans won't disagree:

So in the end, Kaplan admits that perhaps his time with the military has run its course. We can hope. I deeply admire the service Kaplan has rendered the military, especially my parent service, the Navy. I would happily recommend this book to anyone, in particular the senior NCO’s (chief petty officers in the Navy) who Kaplan convincingly portrays as some of the most involved and skilled leaders of people in the world. It would be exceptional reading for a high school or college student considering the great challenge and honor serving in the military can be. Kaplan writes of heroes, of champions who are yet often the most ordinary and down to Earth people you could ever know, despite many being legends in the making whose story is not nearly finished (Kaplan, Barnett and even Bill Kristol are on point in predicting the fine crop of political and society leaders many of them will become).

Yet we know Kaplan can do better. We need him to do better, to do more, to look above and beyond, and below. Unique challenges exist in India’s local and regional cultural, political and religious tensions, the mystery of China’s rise and what’s really in play in its countryside and breakneck development, Nigeria’s race to insolvency, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Columbia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Southern Africa, etc. etc. He’s needed in all these places and amid a universe of serious issues that he’s addressed in the past and that now could be revisited and reconsidered. Not that he will even broach half of them, but he certainly occupies a special niche that few others can dream of filling. Yet he’s in the field of a generation of fine writers (Josef Joffe, Dana Priest, Richard Halloran, Thomas E. Ricks, etc.) who’ve already got it well-covered. Why?