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Right time. Wrong author. That's the bottom line with James Carroll's mammoth House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.
A book about the Pentagon could not be more timely, especially after the furor created by the retired generals who criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month. The controversy has highlighted the tension between the military and its civilian bosses.
A novelist and the author of two award-winning non-fiction books, An American Requiem and Constantine's Sword, Carroll is more a cultural commentator than a historian. He has skillfully blended personal experience, lyrical writing and history in past work, but the approach fails with House of War.
In his 658-page book, Carroll tries to comment on seven decades of U.S. military history, beginning with the dedication of the Pentagon in 1943. He covers World War II and the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars; presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton; nuclear weapons; and 9/11.
This would be a Herculean task for any writer. Carroll adds to the problem because, in his view, he has a valuable perspective: His father was an Air Force general at the Pentagon.
The son grew up to be a priest who was active in the anti-war movement during Vietnam. (Ex-priest Carroll explored these father-son tensions in 1996's American Requiem.)
Carroll's attempts to personalize the Pentagon distract rather than enlighten. And a bigger problem is Carroll's labored attempts to force post-World War II history into certain psychological patterns. He repeatedly returns to the suicide of the first secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, in 1949. After Truman asked for his resignation, Forrestal had a mental breakdown.
Throughout House of War, Carroll hammers home his heavy-handed theory that Forrestal's suicide is a metaphor for the Pentagon. Although Carroll brings himself to speak admiringly of Kennedy and to a lesser degree, Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan, he sees the world through the prism of pacifism.
The reader finishes House of War knowing about Carroll's conflicted family and his personal loathing of nuclear weapons. But that monumental building on the Potomac remains a mystery.
House of War: The Pentagon
and the Disastrous Rise of American Power
By James Carroll
Houghton Mifflin, 658 pp., $30
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