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Favorable
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Booklist Roland Green
An experienced military journalist has created this worthwhile portrait of American ground troops, mostly in elite units, working with the armed forces of other countries to fight terrorism. [Aug 2005, p. 1987]
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune James O'Shea
For all of Kaplan's writing skills and admirable reportage, "Imperial Grunts" has a shortcoming. It flows from his reluctance to judge the soldiers and warriors he interviewed from anyone's perspective but their own. [25 Sep 2005, p. 1]
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
A provocative survey of a changing military charged--it seems ever more apparent--with making the world American, regardless of the world's view of things. [15 June 2005, p. 672]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Military buffs will prefer the chapters on Iraq and Afghanistan, where the soldiers are slugging it out. [20 Jun 2005, p. 70]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Julie Foster
[Kaplan] offers the reader an enlightened way to understand what is happening in the world.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
An admirable portrait of America's volunteer, working-class warrior caste.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal Daniel Ford
If "Imperial Grunts" serves no other purpose, it is a wonderful corrective to the disenchanted troops we sometimes see on the television news or in the new TV series "Over There," or read about in the dispatches of reporters and pundits who are themselves disenchanted by the war on terror.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Eliot A. Cohen
For better or worse, the grunts Kaplan describes so brilliantly will be out there representing America in the chaotic zones of a dangerous world, and to understand them one is well advised to read this book.
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Favorable
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New York Review Of Books John Gray
Kaplan enjoyed a degree of access to US military bases and personnel that is rare if not unique among contemporary journalists. The result has many weaknesses; but it is a consistently thought-provoking and vividly evocative book (the first of several he plans to write on the subject, he tells us) that challenges many preconceptions about the place of the military in American life and the world.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
While Mr. Kaplan's larger, theoretical arguments about the future of the military often read like an unconvincing hodgepodge of talking points lifted from people like Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Max Boot... his on-the-ground reportage makes for riveting reading.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review David Lipsky
It's hard to say whether this is travel writing or analysis. But it's clearly from a book by Robert Kaplan.
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Mixed
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Boston Globe H. W. Brands
But the reader can't help asking whether the policies [the troops] pursue, not to mention the leaders who formulate those policies, are as worthy as the troops themselves. One can't tell from Kaplan's account.
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Stephanie Giry
"Imperial Grunts" is an uneven book, its irregularities highlighted
by its chronological structure. [25 Sep 2005, p.R7]
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Unfavorable
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The Economist
Mr Kaplan's analysis is unsophisticated and unoriginal.
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Unfavorable
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The Nation Andrew J. Bacevich
Buried in all of this chest-thumping jingoism and celebration of soldierly virtue is an argument of sorts. The essence of the argument is as follows: America's unconventional warriors hold the key to governing its global imperium.
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Unfavorable
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The New Republic David Rieff
Kaplan is tragically wrong-headed even within his own frame of reference.
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