nouveau

starts a little slow with pages filled with acronyms and then becomes flowing military history with true 'Bradley Fighting Vehicle's eye view' of the combat onslaught of US forces into Iraq. contains both air and land military activities and information about the political situation surrounding the invasion and subsequent occupation. thoughtful quotations and clear benefit from the teamwork between the New York Times editor and the Marine general, and the Marines' slightly less coverage compared to the Army compensated for by this text.

a 4 but not a 5. the better military writers have a quality of synthesis and urgency that was to some degree only here in parts in this work. a better writer could have step-by-step shown the balance of forces rather than sort of tied everything together somewhat hapharardly--this book was published in March 2006 so it was fairly clearly a reader market-grabber production, but it is professional and it is organized. doesn't drop to the 3/5.

a clear Iraq War reference work.