Greenhill, 2002, 13.95, ISBN: 1-85367-502-4, 176 pages, softcover

This manual reads like a top 10 list. That’s not a bad thing. It’s straightforward and to the point (or points) about how to defeat guerrillas. If only real life was so easy.

Still, for those with an interest, this might be the ultimate barstool debate manual. Each time some technique or tactic is discussed, up pops a shaded box with an anecdote. Sometimes it’s a winning anecdote, other times, not.

This how-to guide is all very entertaining, but I’m not quite sure what you do with it. Unless you are in a place with guerrillas, there’s very little to do, and there’s not a heckova lot of historical prose in it. I mean, you can distill the book into three precepts:

1. Win the hearts and minds of the populace;
2. Kill anyone unaffected by #1;
3. Spend enormous resources doing #1 and #2.

OK, that's a little sarcastic. I'll get more sarcastic in a bit. But the list nature of the book seems more a distillation of armed forces manuals than interpretive prose. I guess there's a need for it. I enjoyed the anedotes appearing every few pages more than the main text that came in between. Then again, when I personally face insurgency in my own home, all I have to do is roll the catnip toy and give 'em a scritch. I guess that would fall under number 1 above...

I do have questions about production and format. Greenhill usually publishes well-crafted books. Some are publishing works of art. This one has me scratching my head.

I find the format clumsy and clunky. Big blocky sub-heads are seemingly stuck in at random. Sometimes they separate out a section. Other times they’re dumped in the middle of sentences. Same thing with mis-aligned numbers. Go figure.

Incomplete sentences sometimes end at the bottom of a page--page 70 and 150 for examples.

I believe the US captured the Philippines from the Spanish, not the French as stated on page 15. Right now, in early 2003, we're blaming the French for lots of things, but the Philippines is not one of them.

Hence, to insert some more devil's sarcasm into this review: either this was produced in such haste that the layout person was under a “get it done by five p.m. or be fired” edict, or, it was produced on a brand new DTP program whose shrink-wrap was cracked the morning of the deadline, or, it was formatted by someone who had never used a DTP program before and had to get it done by 5 p.m. or else.

Seriously, I can’t figure if this is some artistic layout that won awards, or, an attempt to create an artistic layout to win awards. Either way, as you can tell, the layout strikes me, a particularly stodgy curmudgeon, as being in need of an overhaul.

In any case, if you need counter insurgency lessons, please don’t let my formatting criticisms unnerve you. The collected wisdom of counterinsurgency ideas should provide a starting checklist of things to do. As for me, I’ll wait for the movie.