During World War I, Oxford-trained archeologist Lawrence of Arabia used
his knowledge of the Middle East to help organize the Arab revolt
against the Ottoman Empire. In this entertaining and insightful book,
Jason Ridler profiles the intellectuals, outsiders, and eccentrics who
followed in Lawrence's footsteps across the next hundred years of
warfare and who relied on creativity, curiosity, and outside-the-box
thinking to shape battlefields from World War II and Vietnam to Iraq and
Afghanistan. They were Ivy Leaguers and Oxford scholars, anthropologists
and archeologists, an ad executive, an international activist, a Peace
Corps veteran, an émigré journalist (and former teenage member of the
French Resistance), a diplomat--mavericks and oddballs, men and
women--who, not always heralded or heeded and sometimes hated,
challenged traditional military thought and helped win wars, secure
peace, and change the face of modern war.