My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My American Journey: Colin Powell is detailed.
I like the way chapters or sections of a chapter would end with tension or humor that would sum up the entire section, leave it with a desired emotional note. One of my favorites illustrating this point is the chapter on courting Alma Johnson who would eventually become his wife.
Soon after marriage Colin would encounter ‘rivals’ still hoping for the hand of the formerly available Alma Johnson.
Colin ends the section by phrasing it as Alma stuck to a story that they were old friends. Although the phrase ‘stuck to a story’ has a criminal tone to it, the way it was written, I can almost see Colin Powell smile with pride. It was as if to say he had married the most beautiful girl in the world ahead of the two losers.
Abundance of detail is not always good. There were times when my head would shout ‘get on with it Colin.’ I wondered why and the answer I came up with was how many autobiographies have I read?
My American Journey feels long and slow because of the first person perspective which I may not be so accustomed to. The only other general I can remember reading was American Caesar which was not an autobiography and it had a romantic air about it. It helped for the Douglas MacArthur bio that its main body centered on World War II. William Manchester sounded like he was describing a giant; the book had an air of a war film.
Colin Powell talked about everything. His grades; his school life; his Jamaican roots. Appleton Estate Rum is king, serving anything else would be an insult. Did I need to know that? He talks about his career as he had served in Vietnam, Korea, and Germany. The lessons of each would be written in a manner the same as the chapters with Alma’s ‘old friends’.
I especially like one of his military maxims: officers eat last. It never ceases to amaze me especially being in a country obsessed with titles that it goes into their heads; that it separates them from the rest of the herd and other niceties. Yet here he is an officer in the army and he thinks about the bottom of the ladder and morale.
Reading his life is like reading someone with an 8-5 job, if a soldier’s life really had those hours. It’s not like reading about tech startups, entrepreneurs who created new markets, sports heroes who basked in public adulation. There’s a restrictive air about it because he was part of the army and the climb up is straight forward.
And that makes him relatable. He is a man from humble beginnings, went up the ladder through just the system.
He would talk about his advance courses, graduate courses, and performance ratings. In between deployments he would talk about vacations with Alma and raising a family. Colin would think about career prospects, stations he would like to serve in, houses he’d need to set up every deployment. There was an interesting entry of having a bigger house as a general overseas than when he was already working at the White House.
It gets better when Colin Powell gets a White House post, from Assisting a Secretary of Defense to National Security Adviser. I can’t be sure if he’s holding back but he seems to like the Republican administrations he served in better than Clinton’s when he was already on the way to retirement.
Colin Powell entered the policy making realm in the near end stages of the cold war. He planned the Gulf War; stating his policies that he always believes will avoid a repeat of Vietnam. He called some shots when the Philippines asked for American support in the 89 coup. These chapters had an historical and international flavor to it, a universe away from the family’s favorite Jamaican rum.
As he did with each station he served in, Colin Powell also stated lessons and insights in these chapters but with a more macro feel; how he runs his office, his meetings, how he deals with cabinet officials and the president.
And for anyone who doesn’t want that many details, a separate page of Colin Powell’s 13 rules is at the end of the book.
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