Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 91

BOOK REVIEWS At the end, Finkel offers a few Band-Aids to stanch the hemorrhaging of his subjects’ unhealed lives, but it’s not enough to unbreak the hearts of those reading about them. This book leaves lasting questions: is the phrase “thank you for your service” merely lip service to acknowledge a sacrifice too great to measure? Is any amount of thanks enough? Carol Saynisch, Steilacoom, Washington ZUMWALT: The Life and Times of Admiral Elmo Russell “Bud” Zumwalt, Jr. Larry Berman, HarperCollins, New York 2012, 528 pages, $29.99 L ARRY BERMAN’S BIOGRAPHY of Adm. “Bud” Zumwalt is important to more than just naval audiences. Anyone interested in the meaning of the often-used term “transformational leadership” will profit from the book. For those unfamiliar with Zumwalt, he instigated a virtual “cultural revolution” in the U.S. Navy as the chief of naval operations in the early 1970s. Before that, he served as the commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Either of these major “jobs” makes him a person of interest as a historical figure and as a role model for those studying leadership at the highest levels. Zumwalt’s life was filled with triumph and tragedy. The most important chapters are those concerning Zumwalt’s time in Vietnam and his tenure as chief of naval operations. Berman examines Zumwalt’s decision to use Agent Orange in the Mekong Delta to aid his river assault boat crews in interdicting the flow of munitions to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. (Zumwalt’s son, Elmo III, who served in the campaign, contracted cancer attributable to the toxins and later died from complications.) Zumwalt never changed his mind about the rightness of his decision to use Agent Orange, given the circumstances of the war at the time, but he devoted much of the rest of his life helping veterans exposed to the deadly chemical. MILITARY REVIEW March-April 2014 The book’s high point is the discussion of Zumwalt’s ability to bring a racist, sexist, and conservative naval officer corps into the 20th century. Zumwalt issued reforms to the fleet through his famous “Z-grams.” Officers who had been through Zumwalt’s reforms fall into two categories. There are those who believed Zumwalt had done the Navy a great service and those who believed he had ruined it. The group with Berman’s judgment of history on their side believed Zumwalt clearly brought the Navy in line with the rest the United States as to cultural norms. Berman shows how Zumwalt led the difficult fight for institutional change from the top down in the face of opposition from his fellow admirals. Berman brings to light Zumwalt’s skill as an innovative and insightful strategist. George C. Marshall, Paul Nitze, and other famous strategists recognized how Zumwalt’s talented mentoring paid great dividends to the U.S. Navy and to the nation. Berman’s book is very readable. He makes a few errors common to biographies, such as the tendency to canonize the subject. Zumwalt is presented warts and all although he seems to have had few of them. A minor weakness is the book’s end. We never learn how and what Zumwalt died of after his long and productive life—but perhaps that is for the best, given it was his life that mattered, not his death. I highly recommend the book to a broad audience, especially those interested in transformational leadership in peace and war. John T. Kuehn, Ph.D., Fort Leavenworth, Kansas USEFUL ENEMIES: When Waging Wars is More Important Than Winning Them David Keen, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2012, 304 pages, $38.00 D AVID KEEN PROVIDES an insightful analysis concerning the complexities of current global conflicts and the factors continuing them long after international attention has moved on. The central premise in Keen’s Useful Enemies is that 89