I’m guessing most Americans, outside of government and political news junkies, had never really heard of Esper until Trump’s infamous “church walk/photo op” in June 2020 in which Esper declares that he was basically manipulated into the operation—as recounted in the chapter entitled “A Walk in the Park. But in the subsequent months, he conducted himself with honor, despite the seemingly daily danger of being fired for “disloyalty” to Trump. Overall, the memoirist is fair-minded as to politics, even regarding Chuck Schumer. Though his various comments on “the media” are reminiscent of conservative politicos who have been publishing memoirs complaining about their treatment by reporters. But this book really becomes valuable as Esper covers the increasingly failing Trump period following the church-walk fiasco. We find, time after time, how the Secretary of Defense pushes back, and hard, against Trump wanting to provide “military” solutions to domestic unrest. The portrait of Trump reinforces our continuing understanding of someone who seems to have a short fuse and even shorter attention span. Right wing conservatives are not going to like these assessments. On a somewhat negative side, the book has a self-serving aura and reads a bit like a resume overall, as other reviewers have noted. Also, Esper spends a great deal of space defending the National Guard -- one of his former service assignments -- especially regarding the June event. But he doesn’t seem to realize that Americans don’t really make a distinction among “law enforcement” and “military.” If Americans (in person or watching TV news) see protesters being “managed” by uniformed officers, they don’t stop to ask whether they’re Park Police, National Guard, MPs, local city police or armed forces—they’re just uniforms. Later, in his press conference transcript (appendix), he spends a lot of time ducking an incident involving a "medevac" helicopter that was clearly meant to intimidate protesters. This might not be a big deal in retrospect, but why not give us the benefit of your subsequent research instead of leaving it as “we still have to find the facts” in the press conference transcript at the time? (pp 688ff-Appendix) To Esper’s credit, he viewed his job as keeping things non-political, a point he continually reinforces (perhaps overdoing it) as well as avoiding “military solutions” which Trump kept pushing by trying to invoke the Insurrection Act, esp. in the northwest. We learn that his stable allies throughout are joint chiefs of staff chair General Milley as well as A.G. Bill Barr, often against Mark Meadows (former WH Chief of Staff, Robert O’Brien (Trump’s national security advisor, mentioned 33 times), and Stephen Miller (senior Trump advisor). Esper notes thatTrump’s main concern is to make sure he doesn’t “look weak” (e.g. p634) The issue of military bases named after Confederate idols is well covered and once again we find Esper dealing fairly with this sensitive and complex issue (pp 645ff). Esper was eventually dismissed by Trump on Nov. 9, 2021, pretty much as expected. As he says, the long knives were out and “brandished in the open” (p 661). He could have resigned earlier but felt that he, Milley and others needed to be in place to counter rash moves by Trump. He, Milley and others were the guardrail against Trump’s lack of governing expertise. And he was well-aware that if he left too early, he’d be replaced by a Trump yes-man. 𝙆𝙚𝙮 𝙦𝙪𝙤𝙩𝙚: Regarding May-June demonstrations in cities across the country and especially D.C., Trump kept pressing to use active duty forces: “Trump became angrier. ‘We look weak’ and then.. ‘You are losers!’ directed at Esper, Milley, Barr and even VP Pence. ‘None of you have any backbone to stand up to the violence...Can’t you just shoot them? [protesters] Just shoot them in the legs or something,’ he asked.” (Ch. 12, 338-9). 𝙋𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙢. The book’s title appears on the top of each right-hand page instead of the chapter title, which means you have no idea where any chapter begins or ends without flipping through all the pages. And the author's name is on each left-side page. C'mon publishers: get a clue! 𝙋𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙙𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙮. There are numerous redacted words and phrases. I’ve never seen this in a published mainstream book and it’s not clear why the editors didn’t simply cut the material out and paraphrase since none of the material is part of a quote. But this does add some visual credibility to the narrative. 𝐈𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐦: As with other recent political memoirs such as those by Barr, Boehner and Bolton, there’s an air of self-justification throughout the book, almost as though that’s the underlying purpose--to clear your name for posterity. But if you can get past that tone, this book is well worth at least browsing through for your areas of interest.