Majors Cindy Sherman and Bud Lewis are the best young combat officers the army has, and they’ve both been tapped for plum positions as aides-de-camp for two of the Pentagon’s most senior generals. The Pentagon is a cauldron of careerist jockeying and factional squabbling in the best of times, though, and these are not the best of times. A president whom the officer class widely loathes sits in the White House, and grumblings that he’s steering the military onto the rocks are growing louder. Some officers are openly asking: If you believe the president is betraying his country, where does your duty lie?
Just as Sherman and Lewis ease into their jobs — and into a deepening romance — a secret pressure group of military officers called the Sons of Liberty begins to carry out covert protests, symbolic at first, against White House policy. It is with shock that Lewis comes to suspect the group’s leader is his own boss and hero, General B.Z. Ames, and that the man in the center of Ames’s target is Sherman’s boss, General John Shillingworth. As the White House keeps the army grinding through a miserable third-world brushfire war, the Sons of Liberty’s activities grow more treasonous, and their efforts to avoid detection more ruthless, until Majors Sherman and Lewis find themselves in a vicious game with life-and-death stakes and the future of the American military hanging in the balance.
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From the Back Cover:
“Skillfully plotted . . . tautly written . . . will stimulate thought as well as get the adrenaline flowing.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Thomas E. Ricks knows what happens at the Pentagon perhaps sometimes better than those who work there. . . . A Soldier’s Duty . . . thrill[s] and entertain[s] while giving readers a fascinating glimpse inside a culture shrouded in secrecy.”—Chicago Tribune
“Tremendously literate and full of searing observations about life in uniform today. Best of all, it offers a great story.” —National Review
“A powerful, prophetic page-turner. A huge tell-it-like-it-is thriller of a novel that captures the U.S. military’s pain and frustration in the twenty-first century. Epic storytelling that’s as exciting as it is suspenseful.” —Colonel David H. Hackworth (U.S. Army, ret.), author of About Face
“Tom Ricks has done a masterly job with his first novel. His knowledge of the military, vast experience and association with military organizations, and keen insights into the military culture clearly come out in this superb book.” —General Anthony Zinni (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.), former commander, U.S. Central Command
“Timely and extremely relevant . . . A Soldier’s Duty offers a fictional glimpse into what a politicized officer corps might look like, and what factions and crises it could create. It is a warning we should reflect on.”
—Marine Corps Gazette
About the Author:
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas E. Ricks lectures widely to the military and is a member of Harvard University’s Senior Advisory Council on the Project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. He is the author of the bestselling book Making the Corps. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and children.
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- PublisherRandom House
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 037550544X
- ISBN 13 9780375505447
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages272
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