For the most part I enjoyed this book. The most interesting parts of the book are expositions of how idealistic academic lawyers, pragmatic military officials and "middle-of-the-road"-minded politicians approach national security issues. Klaidman does a good job of exposing just how much our laws and legal framework are at play in the war on terror. Can we detain someone outside of a "war zone"? What is a "war zone" in the war on terror? Should terrorists be tried in military or civilian courts? How can we bend and shape the idealistic government our founding fathers envisioned in the constitution to address the tricky issues that a global network of terrorists presents? These questions are at the core of this book. That, I enjoyed.

That being said, it is hard to feel fulfilled after reading this book if only because I am relatively unfamiliar with all the different players involved. The national security bureacracy is evidently huge and so it's hard to keep the characters straight. To some degree I think this is just because there are a ton of names to keep in line; however, at the same time I think Klaidman could have done a better job to develop the book as a narrative and not so much a collection of facts.