PositiveDallas Morning News\"[Beschloss] discusses presidents and issues with clarity that will appeal to the non-expert as well as students of the presidency and American wars. The cases that he presents so convincingly should remind Congress and the public that even when the country is at war, a president\'s power does not supersede the Constitution.\
David A. Nichols
RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsNichols does an excellent job of conveying the fraught tenor of the times ... Implicit in Nichols' tale are lessons relevant today. McCarthy's casual relationship with hard facts and basic truth jeopardized the integrity of the American political system ... The lesson Nichols leaves us with in Ike and McCarthy is that truth tends to be undervalued as a political commodity, and as a result American democracy remains vulnerable to those who do not respect it.
Robert D. Kaplan
RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsKaplan observes that the conviction that America is exceptional 'emanates from the communal experience of settling a frontier,' and 'if this unending vastness could be conquered, then, after some fashion, the world could be, too' ... Kaplan does a good job of stimulating his readers' thinking about ways that national geography shapes national personality. By the time he reaches San Diego and gazes at part of the massive U.S. Pacific Fleet, he has seen much of America and his fellow Americans ... In Earning the Rockies, Robert Kaplan, always comfortable on a road less traveled, leads us toward a better understanding of how America's geography continues to shape this nation's role in the modern world.
Andrew Scott Cooper
PanThe Dallas Morning NewsAlthough Cooper also portrays the shah during the final months of his reign as being indecisive and out of touch, the negatives of his tenure receive too little mention ... overwrought characterizations pervade The Fall of Heaven, which is a shame because Cooper has amassed much important information, particularly about the final months when the shah's rule disintegrated. But some of his sources' personal agendas are obvious, creating credibility problems for the book's narrative.
Rosa Brooks
PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsThis continuing reshaping of the military's role is the heart of the book, but Brooks has more to say. She addresses the concept of sovereignty, which gives a nation an absolute right to govern affairs within its own borders without foreign interference ... How Everything Became War is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the continuing evolution of the modern military, and who is prepared to engage in serious thinking about the future of armed conflict.
