Interesting and neutral (perhaps overly so) summary of the historical movements of the group of people who became instrumental in orchestrating the Iraq war and the philosophies they used to justify it. Seeing their actions as a continuous thread of history is the book's strongest point, bridging the Cold War and connecting it with the ideological pre-emptive strike mentality that dominated the foreign policy of the Bush II administration.

I understand the need for a neutral viewpoint, but I do wish the author would have gone into deeper possible critiques of the Vulcans' self-justified and aggressive world view. In particular, their naivete in assuming Iraqis would embrace the invasion and simplified assumptions of an end game is touched on very lightly. An examination of the mixing of political and business interests of Bush, Cheney etc. is also absent.