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
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