Kurlantzick organizes the book around four individuals:

• Vang Pao, the Hmong general for whom the author has great regard, while acknowledging when the general's goals exceeded his grasp.

• Two CIA lifers who loathed each other's company, case officer Bill Lair and paramilitary officer Tony Poe. Lair believed in the Hmong as a fighting force and pitched the idea in Washington, D.C., while Poe trained the Hmong and fought beside them.

• U.S. ambassador Bill Sullivan, who took over command as the war grew. Sullivan favored the CIA role but did not care to work with the American military. As the author notes, "Using his influence in the Johnson administration, Sullivan made sure that this colonel, who had four times the wartime experience as Sullivan and the CIA station chief together, could not even reside in Laos." The Army colonel remained in Bangkok.

Kurlantzick also provides a sense of the war's scale ($500 million per year in 1970 dollars) and the extent of the bombing (an attack every eight minutes for almost a decade). "Tens of thousands of lives were lost -- Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese, and Thai among them," he notes.

Historians, particularly those who enjoy military history, will find the book compelling, but it is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to more fully understand our government and how its policies evolve.