How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and Foreign Policy columnist, reflects on her years of service as a senior advisor to an undersecretary of defense in this personal, if haphazard, account that is "part journalism, part policy, part history, part anthropology, part law, leavened with occasional stories." Brooks digests the meaning of war, the potential nature of future threats, and the realities of soldiering while she reports on sitting in on councils of war that track down terrorists via drones and other surreal features of America's vast national security framework. She includes snippets of historical warfare, from ancient societies up through America's disastrous forays into Iraq and Afghanistan. As Brooks jets around the world to such distant places as Uganda and Afghanistan, she often comes across as naive, and each episode ends up feeling like "a strange sort of tourism," as she describes a visit to the Guant%C3%A1namo Bay detention center. She refreshingly concludes that Americans must insist on new frameworks to replace the thinking that has put the U.S. on an Orwellian path toward permanent war. Brooks crams too much into her unfocused work, but she does provide a thought-provoking glimpse inside America's vast post-9/11 national security apparatus. Agent: Kristine Dahl, ICM. (Aug.)