When a war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq loomed last year, Atkinson took leave from his work-in-progress, a three-volume history of the U.S. Army's World War II campaigns in Europe (the first volume, An Army at Dawn , 2002, received a Pulitzer Prize). Reverting to his previous career as a Washington Post reporter, Atkinson filed stories about the army's historic 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. In this account of his experience from February to April 2003, Atkinson alludes to personal skepticism about the war but plays it professionally straight, telling what he and the soldiers saw--one soldier in particular. He is General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st. Atkinson was embedded with Petraeus' headquarters staff, and the reporter's viewpoint of the campaign is, therefore, that of Petraeus and his responsibilities for moving 17,000 men and women and their weapons from Kentucky to Kuwait and then into combat. Accompanying Petraeus to his briefings with his brigade colonels, and in his travels by helicopter and vehicle (coming under enemy fire on occasion), Atkinson chronicles the 101st's battles in Najaf, Hilla, and Karbala in vividly gritty detail that is factual and palpably admiring of Petraeus' leadership. As current history, Atkinson's excellent reportage will be intently read, both as a tableau of contemporary martial argot and ethos, and for officers' thoughts about their assignment in Iraq. Expect heavy demand arising from the subject, the author, and multimedia publicity.

A superbly written account of the recent unpleasantness in Mesopotamia. Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post writer Atkinson ( An Army at Dawn , 2002, etc.) saw combat early on in Gulf War II as an embedded journalist with the 101st Airborne. He enjoyed unusually close access to the division's commander, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, a tough "warfighter" who, Atkinson writes, "kept me at his elbow in Iraq virtually all day, every day, allowing me to feel the anxieties and the perturbations, the small satisfactions and the large joys of commanding 17,000 soldiers under fire." Much of Atkinson's account has a commander's-eye, synoptic view of the 2003 Iraq campaign, and it resounds with extraordinary statistics and facts that presumably were not available to the average grunt: for instance, that the Iraqi army was "poorly trained [and] . . . excessively led: an army of half a million included 11,000 generals and 14,000 colonels. (The U.S. Army, roughly the same size, had 307 generals and 3,500 colonels.)" Toward the end of the fight on the ground, the Americans had taken only 10 percent of the prisoners that they had in the first Gulf War—not because the Iraqis fought any better, but because that army simply melted into the crowd, some to fight another day. Atkinson's memoir is engaging on many levels; for civilians, it provides a crash course in military culture, while veterans will appreciate some of the eternal verities of that culture's illogic, whereas American soldiers were not allowed to have alcohol in the theater, for instance, Czech soldiers merrily stowed case after case of beer in their bivouac; whereas previous generations of soldiers marched on their stomachs, today's apparently can't make a move without a staff attorney on hand; and so forth. Atkinson shows the soldiers of the 101st and their comrades nothing but respect, even as he expresses misgivings for the mission: "They were better than the cause they served." Sure to be textbook reading at the Pentagon, but deserving of the widest audience.

Adult/High School-Atkinson takes the long view of history and blends it with a journalist's acuity for telling detail to create a narrative that is rich in immediacy, yet seasoned with thoughtful analysis. In the spring of 2003, the author accompanied combat units to Iraq. He spent two months embedded with the 101st Airborne Division's headquarters staff, sharing their daily experiences from initial deployment out of Fort Campbell, KY, to overseas staging areas in Kuwait, and ultimately bearing witness to the unit's march on Baghdad. His view of the war was from a vantage point that permitted scrutiny of strategy, planning, and decision making at the senior command level. Atkinson's portraits of military leadership are compelling, balanced, and nuanced; they reflect professionalism, a keen sense of responsibility for the 17,000 lives in the command, and constant reevaluation of optimal deployment of the unit's assets. The author draws upon his notes from the frequent battle update briefings he attended with the HQ staff, material from personal interviews conducted in the field, and supplementary data from "after action" reports to which he had access following his return to the States. This is a candid, well-paced work by a writer with an appreciation for the region's culture and geography, foreshadowing the challenges of U.S. presence "in a country with five thousand years' experience at resisting invaders."-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.