A landmark for Tom: For the first time in 3 years, the work bookshelf is empty

Last Friday at 5:15 pm, something happened to
me for the first time in three years: I turned and saw I had no more books or
documents I needed to read or review for the book I am writing, a history of
American generalship since 1939.

It was kind of stunning. For years, every time
I finished a book or paper or oral history interview or article, I would have
another one lined up in the small bookshelf I use as my "on deck circle" for
work reading. On Friday, I finished looking over a new book on Iraq, and then
saw there was nothing left. I actually am waiting on a few books I ordered, as
well as some material from my researcher, but at the moment, nothing awaits -- no
more biographies of obscure World War II generals, no more vacuous memoirs by
Gen. Mark W. Clark, no more revisionist histories of the Vietnam War, no more
bizarrely boring oral history interviews with properly forgotten generals -- "and
then I was assigned to the 352nd Crossword Puzzle Company, down in
Fort Hooha, it was a corps slice where I was XO to old Johnny Smith, well he
was a character, one time we drank a whole six pack and went fishing..."

So I picked up Richard Rumelt's book on Good
Strategy/Bad Strategy, which I've wanted to get to, but which was not
on my list of military history readings.

PS -- Not to panic. On Saturday morning, a
400-page manuscript arrived from a friend needing a blurb. And then the mail
brought a new book about the war in Iraq. Back 2 work 4 me.