This was a good book. It wasn’t great which was a bit disappointing to me considering that I have been hunting for it on the cheap for a while. The flow of the story wasn’t really there. It was more than a bit out of order. Rather than Gen. McChrystal’s biography that was fantastic, this one didn’t go in a linear fashion a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes things happened out of order and she would go from talking about her time as a Lieutenant General to her time as a Major or Lieutenant C
This was a good book. It wasn’t great which was a bit disappointing to me considering that I have been hunting for it on the cheap for a while. The flow of the story wasn’t really there. It was more than a bit out of order. Rather than Gen. McChrystal’s biography that was fantastic, this one didn’t go in a linear fashion a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes things happened out of order and she would go from talking about her time as a Lieutenant General to her time as a Major or Lieutenant Colonel.

All of that said, the leadership lessons were relevant I think but they were not clearly defined as to what the lesson was. I could point out the major themes that are echoed throughout the military right now since I am in the military, but she didn’t state at the beginning of a chapter or otherwise what the actual lesson was in such a way that someone with no military background would find it easy to see in my opinion.

Additionally, she spent a significant amount of time talking about how much she downplayed the fact that she was a woman while she was in the military and then as a result of spending all her time doing that in the book spent what seemed like half the book talking about being a woman in the military. It was very clearly a biography not about a “Soldier” but instead about a “female Soldier” because of her constant reminder that she wasn’t a “female Soldier” but a “Soldier” if that makes any sense. Hopefully it does.
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This was a terrific book. It may be because the General and I were assigned to the same places on some occasions and we shared some similar experiences but I really enjoyed this book. Looking back over her military career, she provides many useful insights and observations into the US Army and into the politics that goes into that career field. If I were to embark on a military career now, I would devour this book and keep it as a ready reference. I have seen too many young officers run afoul of
This was a terrific book. It may be because the General and I were assigned to the same places on some occasions and we shared some similar experiences but I really enjoyed this book. Looking back over her military career, she provides many useful insights and observations into the US Army and into the politics that goes into that career field. If I were to embark on a military career now, I would devour this book and keep it as a ready reference. I have seen too many young officers run afoul of the “system” and this book might just help them to navigate their way through it. There were a few factual errors in the book but they were not serious enough to change the tone or content in any way. Its just a problem with the publisher’s fact checker who was not performing their job as well as the General was performing hers. Don’t be deterred by a couple of miniscule mistakes, read this book and enjoy the message it imports.
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