The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare (Hardcover)

by James F. Dunnigan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A leading U. S. military analyst offers a timely and useful survey of the history of special operations. Dunnigan (How to Make War; The Next War Zone; etc.) claims a history for commando missions going back to Neolithic hunting parties, and names the famous raid on Troy, in which Greek soldiers hid themselves inside a wooden horse, a "classic commando operation." His relatively speedy discussion of elite forces in the centuries leading up to the Second World War is somewhat uneven, as he tends to claim every small, highly-skilled category of soldiers (such as the English longbowmen and the German Stosstruppen-storm troops-of WWI) as part of the Spec Ops lineage. When he gets to the WWII ("a Golden Age for commandos") and after, however, he provides a valuable roster of major special operations forces (including Soviet Spetsnaz and British SAS). Joining this are fine and comprehensible narratives of their roles in Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Falklands, the first Gulf War and most recently the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Throughout the book, he also weaves in analysis of the influence of early elite forces on the development of their more numerous contemporaries. This is perhaps not an indispensable history, but it is certainly a valuable one.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Detail as copious as the American public's fascination with war is fervent." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 306 pages
• Publisher: Citadel; First Edition edition (June 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806524154
• ISBN-13: 978-0806524153
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,338,005 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Definitive, but a good survey with reservations, March 28, 2004

By	J. Collins (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dunnigan's book is certainly timely. Special Operations Forces (SOF) from all US services (USCG included), and allies have been making headlines in Afghanistan and Iraq for almost two years. The "Quiet Professionals", contrary to US Media propaganda, generally eschew ANY sort of public attention. For the reader with an interest, and little background, in Special Operations then, finding surveys/histories is problematic. After giving a history of special operations forces and their derivation, the author shows how some of the selection methods are applied to many first-world nation's volunteer forces; thus making them also "perfect soldiers" into the 21st Century. His best work is the short history of warfare, where "warrior cultures" are bested by military professionals (US military bureaucrats spouting about "warrior ethos" take note). His descriptions of operations in Vietnam, the Gulf I/II and Afghanistan are quite good as well. The "reservations" I refer to above have to do with some of his linkage and conclusions. While it's probably fair to link the fieldcraft of neolithic hunting parties with that of SOF (John Keegan's belief is that the arduous selection and training is designed to reinstill those skills that our ancestors grew up practicing.), it's going too far to consider them "commando/SOF" units in any sense. WW1 Stosstruppen were simply line-infantry given some retraining in tactics and new weapons, no special selection or skills in operating behind enemy lines was given or expected. Also, the author gets some details wrong, details that could've easily been corrected had the manuscript been reviewed by someone with SOF experience-but this is minor.
Overall,some good information, but some stretching of history to fit his thesis, keeps me from recommending this book completely.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but a lot of filler., July 14, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of U.S. Warfare (Paperback)

The book gives a decent overview of 'Special' or 'Elite' forces, and their role in modern day warfare and counter-terrorism; all very interesting and timely. However, I found the contents amateurly structured and VERY repetitive. At times I thought I had accidentally lost my place and was re-reading whole chapters. With each new heading, much of the same information was reiterated, without actually casting much new light on the topic. There are also a few redundant instances of numbers being thrown around for the sake of sounding 'scientific'.
Also, if I'm paying good money for a hardcover book, I expect someone to have done more than a cursory MS Word spellcheck, like maybe proofread it before it goes to print...
Other reviewers have also noted some factual errors, and I noticed some topics the writer dismissed as "murky" (especially if casting Special Forces in a negative light), and declined to comment further. I found this odd, since some of these topics are well-known to anyone with any interest in the post-Viet Nam military and a matter of public record.
In short, this book would have benefitted from a good editor.
If you're new to the topic, you could do worse, but I would recommend Tom Clancy's Special Forces for information, and Robin Moore's The Hunt for Bin Laden and Charles Beckwith's memoirs concerning Delta Force for both information AND a good read.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars JFD again delivers "approachable" military history & info, March 6, 2004

By	"judsonkring" (Indianapolis, IN United States) - See all my reviews

No work on a subject this involved can possibly be all things to all people. That is not James F. Dunnigan's goal with this book...or any other book he has ever written. The excellence of this book is its capacity for exhibiting military data in contexts that the average reader can understand. Nearly all of Dunnigan's writing is pursued with this goal. To demand that one must have "lived" a military background in order to write about it accurately and compellingly can be argued in another forum. This book delivers what it sets forth to achieve, doing so in a way that readers who do not have exhaustive military backgrounds will both appreciate and comprehend.