73 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE Book on Boyd, June 4, 2003
A well-written, clear, and perfectly adequate introduction to the life and thought of John Boyd, arguably the most influential American military thinker of modern times.
Coram's BOYD is the "good read", this one's for the student and theorist.
Curiously, some of the anecdotes involving Boyd's life differ completely from Coram's volume, e.g., the events surrounding the birth of Energy Maneuverability at Georgia Tech. I'm inclined to give the nod to Hammond here on the grounds that his versions tend to make more sense.
Although unquestionably an admirer of Boyd, Hammond's assessment is reasonable and balanced-he's quite open about Boyd's manifest flaws, his willful eccentricity above all, and makes it clear that Boyd was far from alone in his efforts to better the U.S. military.
There's a solid discussion of the OODA cycle, probably Boyd's greatest insight and most effective contribution to tactical thought (as the Republican Guard recently discovered). Hammond carries out preliminary work in placing Boyd's concept among those of other military thinkers, in particular Clausewitz, which is valuable if not as detailed as it might have been. He shows little familiarity with Asian strategists, many of whom were direct influences on Boyd's thought. (e.g., Miyamoto Mushashi: "In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing... It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain." -["A Book of Five Rings", Harris translation, P. 48.] How's that for your Boyd Cycle! )
In Hammond's eyes, Boyd was a synthesist, applying previously isolated bits and pieces of knowledge to construct an overarching theory. A serious analysis of Boyd's work would require familiarity not only with strategy, but with quantum physics, modern clinical psychology, management theory, and half a dozen other equally arcane disciplines. To fully understand Boyd, one might be required to become Boyd!
One annoying note is Hammond's dismissal of Ronald Reagan's attempts to rebuild the military (something also found in Coram), implying that Boyd shared this loathing. If any actual evidence of this exists, I'd like to see it.
Finally, though he fails to make note of it, Hammond makes it quite apparent that Boyd was, above all else, a phenomenon better known in the East than our hemisphere. He was a sensei, a master, one who teaches arcane and difficult knowledge to a select group of followers, who then move on to teach others. This explains so much about Boyd-the almost medieval loyalty he inspired (even among people who never met him, as Gerald Martin points out about Coram in his insightful review of BOYD), his penchant for using the briefing as a teaching tool, the unwillingness to fit into any organization, the wandering from post to post, even the cheap and ragged clothes!
The sensei approach has its flaws (among them the master's unfitness for family life) sensei rarely do well at writing, which explains why Boyd never progressed with his magnum opus, "Creation and Destruction". This tends to throw the teachings into the hands of interpreters, some of whom may be less than capable. There's a danger that Boyd's thought might become Californized, in much the same way that the perfectly legitimate scientific field of quantum mechanics was rendered unrecognizable by various New Agers in the 70s and 80s.
But Hammond is not one of these. We need more--a carefully edited and annotated edition of the Green Book, to start with. (not to mention the tantalizing question: is there a videotape?) But we'll be discussing Boyd for a long time to come. Hammond's book is a fine introduction. It'll be awhile before we see better.
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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important Work, March 15, 2003
While I find it hard to disagree with some of the comments in the previous reviews, I would suggest that describing this as hagiographical is to criticize Hammond's performance of a job that he never undertook. The Mind of War, strictly speaking, is not a biography of John Boyd. It is better described as a presentation and discussion of Boyd's ideas. A person who is interested in learning about both Boyd's life and his ideas should read Robert Coram's book Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War along with The Mind of War. Grant Hammond has written a very important book. John Boyd's preferred form of communication was the military brief and, as a result, his ideas are virtually undocumented. Hammond had the opportunity to know and work with Boyd for six years and, to a significant degree, has written the book that Boyd never did.
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49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Getting Boyd Right, July 20, 2001
Grant Hammond has written a superb profile of John Boyd and his ideas. In so doing, he has publicized one of the most influential but least known American military thinkers of the Twentieth Century. Boyd was that rarity of a thinking man inside an ahistorical and anti-intellectual institution. This is not a book about the military reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s per se, but rather about a powerful mind that greatly indluenced the movement. Boyd, to be sure, was abrasive, but most mavericks are; their lot in life is to irritate the self-satisfied. Boyd was certainly more honorable than many of his detractors inside the Air Force. At last, someone has done justice to Boyd and his intellectual legacy
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