First published 1997
Colonel Sarah Mitchell arrives at the Pentagon's Strategic Studies Institute for an intensive year-long program designed to prepare senior officers for high-level command. She expects rigorous coursework and war games. What she finds instead challenges everything she believes about military leadership. Her classmates include ambitious peers from every service branch, each carrying their own agendas and secrets. The curriculum pushes beyond traditional tactics into murky territory where political calculations matter as much as battlefield strategy. Mitchell must master not just the art of war but the subtler skills of institutional survival. When a controversial assignment forces her to choose between her principles and her career advancement, she discovers that the most dangerous battles happen far from any front line. The program will graduate officers ready to lead in an uncertain world, but first it will test whether Mitchell can hold onto her integrity while learning to play by rules she never knew existed.
Genres: military-fiction, thriller, political-thriller, academic
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Pentagon, Strategic Studies Institute
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
64 pages · Paperback · Center for Strategic & Intl studies