A Soldier's Duty
"The politicians have failed. We are being misused by civilians who serve market values, not the nation. Our values run deeper than the latest polls." Thus a proclamation by the Sons of Liberty, a subversive group in the U.S. military that dominates this novel. An experienced defense correspondent, Ricks tells a story in which both the heroes and the villains are soldiers who think they are hewing closely to soldierly values. The book takes the form of a work of fiction and is built around Pentagon infighting during a war going poorly in, of all places, Afghanistan. But it is really an extremely well informed meditation on contemporary civil-military relations, which are in a state of deep (although concealed) crisis. The novelist, the reader quickly realizes, can say what the journalist merely intuits.
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