My American Journey by Colin Powell with Jos. Persico

My American Journey by Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico; published by Random House; copyright 1995; first edition; 643 pages includes index and photographs. This h/c book w/ dj is in good condition with minor shelf/handling wear; pages clean and unmarked.

“Colin Powell is the embodiment of the American dream. He was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He knew the rough life of the streets. He overcame a barely average start at school. Then he joined the Army. The rest is history – but a history that until now has been known only on the surface. Here, for the first time, he himself tells us how it happened, in a memoir distinguished by a heartfelt love of country and family, warm good humor, and a soldier’s directness. He writes of the anxieties and missteps as well as the triumphs that marked his rise to four-star general, National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mastermind of Desert Storm, and now the man the country would most like to draft as President just as it drafted General Eisenhower before him in 1952.

We see Powell growing up, getting into mischief, going to church with his father, working in a bottling plant, joining the ROTC. We follow him as a green young lieutenant on his first foreign posting in Germany, where his ascent is nearly aborted by a blunder on the day he is assigned to guard an atomic cannon. We go on patrol with him in the jungles of Vietnam, where he is wounded, and then, in the first surprise turn of his career, into the every-bit-as-dangerous thickets of Washington bureaucracy as a Pentagon aide in the Carter administration. We see how he handled the humiliations inflicted on him as a black soldier traveling in the Deep South and the unnerving challenges he faced as a battalion commander in Korea, where the army guarding the border was plagued by drugs, drinking, a lack of discipline, and racial tension. We are edge-of-the-seat spectators to some of the great international dramas of our time – Desert Storm, the invasion of Panama, the dark dealings of Iran-contra with Ollie North and Bill Casey, the climactic meetings with Gorbachev. And we are present also at the encounters with President Clinton on the controversial question of gays in the military.

Colin Powell, moving easily between the Army and high positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations, has a unique perspective. As an active soldier, he has experienced the sharp end of political decisions in Washington. as an advisor to three Presidents, he has seen how policy is shaped and he has shaped it himself. It was Powell whom President Reagan summoned to the White House to help National Security Advisor Frank Carlucci clean up the mess after the Iran-contra debacle. It was Powell whom President Clinton called back from private life to accompany former President Carter on his eve-of-war mission to Haiti. Haiti was a consummation of Powell’s translation from soldier to statesman and popular leader. Not since Dwight Eisenhower has a figure in public life been held in such universal esteem or had so few negatives.

Powell gives us behind-the-scenes portraits of Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, of Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, and many others. This is a book of political excitement and disclosure, but it is much more. It is a life well lived and well told. It is also a view from the mountaintop of the political landscape of America. While Americans grapple over who will lead the country, General Powell’s passionate beliefs in family, personal responsibility, and, in his own words, ‘the greatness of America and the opportunities it offers’, will exhilarate readers of all political persuasions. It is an utterly absorbing recounting of an adventure that has not run its course. It is history with a vision.”

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