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The unsentimental education of an idealistic, brilliant American naval officer.
It begins in 2001. Christopher Brownfield is a na�ve young midshipman. His heroes at the time: Oliver North and John McCain.
In My Nuclear Family, Brownfield writes about how he loved the navy for its “rigidity and its clarity in separating right from wrong”; how he cut his teeth there on the principles of energy and violence, strategy and thermodynamics, on war doctrine and weapons systems. The question was never if he was capable of killing; it was simply about methods and rationales.
He writes about his years serving on a nuclear submarine, with its hundred-ton back-up battery—the first hybrid vehicle capable of sustaining its environment and mission independent of oil.
We see Lieutenant Brownfield making his way, receiving his advanced nuclear supervisory certification from the departments of defense and energy, and, after years of training to become a nuclear submariner, being able to supervise an entire reactor plant aboard a nuclear warship.
He writes about his ship’s secret missions in the global war on terror and how he begins to experience his own eroding faith in the entire operation . . .
He describes his decision to leave the navy to attend graduate school at Yale, as his colleagues in the submarine force are faced with a new morbid reality—an involuntary lottery for service in Iraq. And how, for the sake of his country, his naval forefathers, and his mother (who believed in cleaning up after one’s own messes), Brownfield is determined to do something good in the name of the United States.
With one foot in the door at Yale, Brownfield jumps on the hand grenade and volunteers to fill a one-year tour of duty in Baghdad, working in the strategic headquarters, reporting to the top general on matters of oil and electricity.
Brownfield, a submariner in the sands of the desert, writes about how he finds himself better equipped to handle the energy problem than his much more senior colleagues, many of whom had no prior experience in energy or management. With the arrival in Iraq of General Petraeus, and with policy changes and an overhaul in strategy, Brownfield is put center stage in the unit, supervising the colonel who was his former superior in rank; briefing cabinet ministers, ambassadors, and generals, who endorse his groundbreaking plans for energy efficiency, development, and counterinsurgency . . .
- Sales Rank: #2784885 in Books
- Published on: 2010-09-21
- Released on: 2010-09-21
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.10" w x 5.90" l, 1.40 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Now a graduate student, the author of this brash memoir of dysfunction in the armed forces began as a lieutenant on the nuclear submarine USS Hartford, where military professionalism was tarnished by systematic cheating on the nuclear-propulsion exam and high blundering when senior officers ran the ship aground. Then came a stint in the pre-surge Green Zone trying to reconstruct Iraq's electricity system in a unit whose officers spent their time downloading pirated movies or angling for consulting gigs. Tasked with the daily briefing on the collapsing grid-- blackouts proliferated as insurgents wrecked power lines, killed repair workers, and kidnapped officials--Brownfield seethed as his efforts to address problems bogged down in military bureaucracy. Brownfield was one obstreperous lieutenant: he crashes a party with Ahmed Chalabi and the American ambassador, sounds off to a visiting senator, and tweaks generals to their faces. He similarly overreaches with his incoherent analysis of the Iraq War as a war for oil and a vague call for a global energy regime of "sustainable interdependence." Still, Brownfield's stimulating, disabused tale of corruption, incompetence, and careerism in uniform is a useful--sometimes explosive--corrective to hagiographic accounts of America's militarized approach to nation building. Photos.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
A military contribution to the genre of Gen X memoirs, Brownfield’s recollections encompass his duty on a nuclear attack submarine and a posting to Baghdad. Now out of the navy, Brownfield reconstructs his service with palpable compositional creativity: the dialogue is invariably witty, sketches of superiors are amusingly irreverent, and accounts of his assignments convey his dubiousness about their usefulness. If inventive at the edges, Brownfield recounts real events and people: he witnessed his sub, the USS Hartford, sustain serious damage in a 2003 grounding, and in Baghdad, he had a Green Zone view of the deteriorating American position in Iraq immediately preceding the military’s “surge” of 2007. His task: restore Iraq’s electricity. His results: nothing! Frustration with failure stokes Brownfield’s caustic commentary about brother officers’ devotion to bureaucracy at the expense of achieving the mission. After squeezing the humor out of his experiences, Brownfield unsurprisingly criticizes the Iraq venture and announces that his next career will be in sustainable energy. Let’s hope he takes notes since he is such a clever craftsman of the memoir form. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
"Entertaining . . . [written with] a cocky, star-spangled, wide-angle feel, as if a subversive young novelist had decided to rewrite a Tom Clancy thriller after first piloting some nuclear submarines as a gonzo practice drill . . . hard to put down because of its rolling, seriocomic thunder and because of all the carnage, satiric and otherwise. . . A book that’s going to rattle some cages."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"A stimulating, disabused tale of corruption, incompetence, and careerism in uniform. A sometimes explosive, corrective to hagiographic accounts of America’s militarized approach to nation building."
—Publishers Weekly
"Witty, insightful, scathing, appalling and inspiring—a must-read book on the Iraq war."
—Kirkus (starred)
Most helpful customer reviews
28 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
Where to begin...
By Mickeygees
I have never before read a book where the author is so shamelessly self-promoting as Chris Brownfield. As another reviewer previously pointed out, his arrogance removes most (if not all) of his credibility, and makes this book very difficult to enjoy. For someone who was clearly not an outstanding JO (not by a long shot), he has way too much criticism and not enough respect for his fellow Navy submariners.
For a book titled "My Nuclear Family", Brownfield spends a lot of time talking about his IA in Iraq and his problems with the US government and the War on Terror. All organizations, particularly the US government has it's fair share of problems, however I hardly consider a sub JO an expert on politics or the intricacies of war. His claims that submarines are obsolete in today's Navy only further demonstrate his ignorance on the subjects.
I was led to read this book because I am quite familiar with the Navy's nuclear training pipeline and the job requirements of a submarine JO. As such, I was most interested in the first part of Brownfield's book which focuses on his time as a JO on the USS Hartford. It seems to me that Brownfield was a sub-standard officer at best, and is now a disgruntled ex-employee of the Navy who wanted to write a bitch-fest about how difficult his job had been while simultaneously making himself out to be the lone person deserving of respect in a profession he believes to be fallen.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. The officers currently serving in our sub force are an important part of our national defense and are very deserving of our respect and gratitude, despite what Brownfield thinks.
31 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
I Don't Trust This Man
By David Taylor
I might as well say it straight out: I just don't trust this man. His book consists of a series of stories about his experiences in the US Navy, interspersed with expositions on the nature of war in general and the Iraq War in particular. The tone of both the stories and the expositions is one of unremitting arrogance. He's always the smartest guy in the room, and -- with a few notable exceptions -- everyone around him is incompetent, dishonest, or both. This attitude not only makes for some tortuous reading, it also undermines his credibility as an author. And credibility is everything for this book, because Brownfield makes some pretty damning claims about the U.S. Military without providing any evidence to back them up.
Now, perhaps these claims are all true. I have no illusions about the perfection of either our military or our political leadership, particularly during the Bush administration. But I need facts to back up the kinds of claims of incompetence Brownfield makes, not just opinions, and the author provides no evidence whatever that the events actually happened, much less in the contemptible, bumbling manner he describes. There are no footnotes in this book, no documentation of the events, no research -- just a series of stories and opinions. According to his introduction, he is revealing classified information and he's changed the names of all the people he belittles, so there's no way to check his facts, much less validate his opinions. All we have to go on is his word, and that's why personal credibility is so important to this book. Given the smug, self-serving tone of superiority that permeates the book, I find no compelling reason to believe his claims.
As to the lectures on war that break up the stories, they mostly state the obvious or rehash events that are much better covered in other books -- books that carefully document the inner workings of our military and the political manipulations that led to the invasion of Iraq (read Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 if you really want the facts). But if there is anybody left on the planet who still thinks that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, or that he really did have weapons of mass destruction, this author has nothing new to say to them.
I was hoping to learn something of value from this book, something that might help me understand why our country continues to have these terrible and costly military misadventures. All I learned from this book is that the author was always the smartest guy in the room. Or chose to believe that he was.
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Black Sheep Writes About His Family
By W. from USA
Christopher Brownfield was a substandard nuclear officer by his own admissions. He uses his weaknesses (non-technical major in a technical field and being a junior officer) to excuse unprofessionalism and the acceptance of low standards.
The guy who can barely pass his nuclear plant basic exams after over a year of training somehow (according to his writings) turns out to be the smartest, most ethical guy in the room on every occasion. Strange isn't it? Not so strange if you are the author of the book and have a huge ego and want to look back at your past and see everyone else to blame for anything that went wrong around you.
When Chris gets older and perhaps reaches maturity, he may look back on his time in the Navy and be ready to write a real tell all book about where he went wrong and let down all his bosses ... from the CO that he didn't save from running the Sub aground to the Iraqi's that he couldn't help protect or help get electrical power.
Yes, there are things beyond one's control, but Chris is a loser who makes excuses for his own shortcomings. It is obvious why "Jessica Rabbit" (a character in the book) dumped him. If he was a "doer" rather than a whiner, he would have had successes to write about.
I'm throwing my copy of his book away. It wasn't worth the $4 I paid for it.
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