Duty

there is no other word for it I came to feel for the troops, and the overwhelming sense of personal responsibility I developed for them. So much so that it would shape some of my most significant decisions and positions. Toward the end of my time in office, I could barely speak to them or about them without being overcome with emotion. Early in my fifth year, I came to believe my determination to protect them in the wars we were in and from new wars was clouding my judgment and diminishing my usefulness to the president, and thus it played a part in my decision to retire.
 
I make no pretense that this book is a complete, much less definitive, history of the period from 2006 to 2011. It is simply my personal story about being secretary of defense during those turbulent, difficult years.
 
Chapter 1
Summoned to Duty
 
I had become president of Texas A&M University in August 2002, and by October 2006 I was well into my fifth year. I was very happy there, and many but not all Aggies believed I was making significant improvements in nearly all aspects of the university (except football). I had originally committed to staying five years but agreed to extend that to seven years summer 2009. Then my wife, Becky, and I would finally return to our home in the Pacific Northwest.
 
The week of October 15, 2006, the week that would change my life, started out routinely with several meetings. Then I took to the road, ending up in Des Moines, Iowa, where I was to give a speech on Friday, the twentieth.
 
Just past one p.m. that day I received an e-mail from my secretary, Sandy Crawford, saying that President Bush s national security adviser, Steve Hadley, wanted to speak to me on the phone within an hour or two. Hadley s assistant was quite insistent that the message be passed to me. I told Sandy to inform the as

shrewd, sometimes eye-popping observations along the way about the nature of war and the limits of power. Gates was a truly historic secretary of defense precisely because he did get so much done His descriptions of how he accomplished these feats the mix of cooptation and coercion that he employed should be read by every future defense secretary, and executives of all stripes, as a guide for how to command and overhaul a large institution.
Fred Kaplan, Slate
 
A breathtakingly comprehensive and ultimately unsparing examination of the modern ways of making politics, policy, and war Students of the nation s two early twenty-first century wars will find the comprehensive account of Pentagon and White House deliberations riveting. General readers will be drawn to [Gates ] meditations on power and on life at the center of great political decisions His vision is clear and his tale is sad. Gates takes Duty as his title, but the account of his service also brings to mind the other two thirds of the West Point motto: honor and country.
David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe
 
Duty is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of what makes Washington tick.
Edward Luce, Financial Times
 
Gates has offered an informed and earnest perspective, one that Americans ought to hear, reflect on and debate.
Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic

Engaging and candid .Young people who want to understand and live up to the highest ideals of American statesmanship would do well to read this book carefully; Gates has much to teach about the practical idealism that represents the best kind of American leadership.
Foreign Affairs

Compelling trenchant.
Newsday

This is a serious, thoughtful, illuminating, and valuable insider account of the final years of the George W. Bush administration and early years of the Obama presidency .Gates holds little back in this revealing memoir.
Choice

If you read only one book by a Washington insider this year, make it this one. It should be savored by anyone who wishes to know more about the realities of decision-making in today s federal government.
Library Journal

The full story that emerges from this detailed and often deeply personal account is of a man fed up with the dysfunction of the nation s capital.
The American Conservative