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A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace
Penguin Press
October 2014
On Sale: October 7, 2014
Featuring: Leon Panetta
512 pages
ISBN: 1594205965
EAN: 9781594205965
Kindle: B00INIXG6G
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
The inspiring and revelatory autobiography of the defense
secretary and CIA director who led the intelligence war that
killed Bin Laden, among many important roles in a legendary
career It could be said that Leon Panetta has had two of the most
consequential careers of any American public servant in the
past fifty years. His first career, beginning as an army
intelligence officer and including a distinguished run as
one of Congress’s most powerful and respected members,
lasted thirty-five years and culminated in his
transformational role as Clinton’s budget czar and White
House chief of staff. He then “retired” to establish the
Panetta Institute with his wife of fifty years, Sylvia; to
serve on the Iraq Study Group; and to protect his beloved
California coastline. But in 2009, he accepted what many
said was a thankless task: returning to public office as the
director of the CIA, taking it from a state of turmoil after
the Bush-era torture debates and moving it back to the vital
center of America’s war against Al Qaeda, including the
campaign that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. And
then, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, Panetta became the
U.S. secretary of defense, inheriting two troubled wars in a
time of austerity and painful choices. Like his career, Worthy Fights is a reflection of Panetta’s
values. It is imbued with the frank, grounded, and often
quite funny spirit of a man who never lost touch with where
he came from: his family’s walnut farm in beautiful Carmel
Valley, California. It is also a testament to a lost kind of
political leadership, which favors progress and duty to
country over partisanship. Panetta is a Democrat who pushed
for balanced budgets while also expanding care for the
elderly and sick; a devout Catholic who opposes the death
penalty but had to weigh every drone strike from 2009
through 2011. Throughout his career, Panetta’s polestar has
been his belief that a public servant’s real choice is
between leadership or crisis. Troubles always come about
through no fault of one’s own, but most can be prevented
with courage and foresight. As always, Panetta calls them as he sees them in Worthy
Fights. Suffused with its author’s decency and stubborn
common sense, the book is an epic American success story, a
great political memoir, and a revelatory view onto many of
the great figures and events of our time.
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