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A Review! A Review?

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This is the first five-authored book review I’ve ever seen:

and 

It’s not every day someone argues that an entire service of the United States Armed Forces should be disappeared. But that is exactly what Robert Farley proposes in his new book, Grounded. Farley makes a case for the elimination of the U.S. Air Force, basing his argument on the inaccurate notion that strategic bombing is the sole reason for its existence as an independent service. He also takes the Air Force to task for not adequately supporting ground forces. He believes Air Force aircraft are best subsumed into the Army and Navy for better support of soldiers and sailors. In doing so, Farley disregards what the Air Force does best—air domain dominance—and undervalues a key component of United States historical successes in combat….

On the basis of these conclusions, and mindful of the incredible record of success achieved by America’s armed forces from the advent of the airplane to today, we ask ourselves whether we are willing to bet the lives of America’s sons and daughters, and the security of this nation, on Professor Farley’s recommendation.  We are not.

Whenever I review a book, I revisit Robert Pinsky’s Slate article on the Three Golden Rules of Book Reviewing.

I’d like to think that the three essentials for reviewers were invented by Aristotle, preserved by his students, and handed down for thousands of years by oral tradition. After all, before the review was an important category of journalism, before physical books, even before printing, readers must have asked other readers to report on works they had not yet read from scrolls or tablets. I first encountered the three requirements in the 1970s, when I used to write the old, traditional Consumer Reports style of reviews I have in mind here—sometimes under a pen name—because I needed the money, even in the small quantities paid to reviewers. This was the age of the typewriter, and one of the newspapers I wrote for gave me the rules as part of the same photocopied style-sheet that specified the quality of ribbon, the size of margins, where to double-space, when to use italics, all-caps, or quotation marks for titles, where to put the reviewer’s byline, and so forth…

Every book review, said the anonymous document, must follow three rules:

1. The review must tell what the book is about.
2. The review must tell what the book’s author says about that thing the book is about.
3. The review must tell what the reviewer thinks about what the book’s author says about that thing the book is about.

Now, in some sense this review fulfills all three rules. Grounded is, indeed, about abolishing the Air Force. I do, in fact, think that the Air Force should be abolished. The reviewers don’t think that the Air Force should be abolished. Beyond that, however, I must confess that my disappointment with the review extends beyond the fact that  the assembled captains and colonels remain unconvinced. The review cites no specific arguments that I make in the book, beyond the title, and what I’ve alluded to in the various articles associated with the book. The review cites no specific pages or passages, and makes no claims with respect to errors of fact. The reviewers do not engage in any way with my discussion of organizational theory, my depiction of the history of the RAF or the USAF, my discussion of lawfare and the morality of airpower, or with my discussion of the impact of drone technology on airpower theory. On at least one point– “He believes the Air Force should support ground forces—period”– the reviewers badly mis-characterize my argument.

Were the five reviewers, all having read the book with some care, unable to agree on specific problems? Did they determine that a broad rebuttal on policy grounds was more useful than an actual book review?  I’m curious.

In any case, I’ll have a longer response a bit later this week.

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