The Pentagon: The People, the Building and the Mission

The Pentagon: The People, the Building and the Mission

THE PENTAGON has been called many things by many people, including the "Fudge Factory" and "Puzzle Palace," but to those who work there, directing the defense of the United States, it is often simply called "The Building." Monumental in its five-pointed symmetry, the massive five-sided, five-story structure encompasses over six million square feet of floor space and covers twenty-nine acres of formerly swampy ground. There has always been much more to the Pentagon than concrete, limestone and steel. In The Pentagon, veteran defense writer and novelist David Alexander delivers the inside story on the people who have brought the Pentagon to life, from army chief of staff General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, charged with creating a force that could defeat Germany and Japan, to the 'whiz kids' brought to the Pentagon by John F. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Alexander's look down the corridors of power unfolds the modern history of the American defense establishment, its personalities and politics, and the evolving role that the Pentagon has played in our national security. From its initial design to its restoration after the attack of 9/11, this book tells the story of the Pentagon as it is inextricably linked to the story of American power and strength.David Alexander has also brought his keen and discriminating eye for lyrical prose to his account of the Pentagon, truly making this outstanding work of nonfiction "history as the novel, the novel as history."Alexander has also departed from a standard chronological approach to narrative history. In tackling as large and ambitious a project as The Pentagon, Alexander developed a writing plan that replaced an easy and often-used sequential story line approach with a more complex narrative scheme that was designed to give far greater scope and depth to the narrative he envisioned for his book. It seemed the only approach worthy of a subject as large, as timely, as challenging and as supremely important as the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the global wars in which these icons of military power and global reach have played key and decisive strategic roles.In telling the Pentagon's story Alexander abandoned the strict chronological storytelling format characteristic of other works and wove together a tapestry in prose that drew on disciplines ranging from the technicalities of the building construction trades, to the secrets of stealth warfare, to the intricacies of foreign policy, to the stratagems and behind-the-scenes gambits of international leadership, to the workings of the defense firms that together make up the global defense sector. Nor has he left out detailed coverage of the diverse personalities from Franklin Roosevelt to Robert Gates who envisioned, built and guided the actions and policies of the Pentagon from its origins to the catastrophic attack of 9/11, and who have launched it into the future.THE PENTAGON Starting with the Pentagon’s planning and construction before and during World War II, author David Alexander unfolds the modern history of the American defense establishment and the personalities and the politics that created it, along with the evolving role that the Pentagon has played in US national security and international military affairs.From its initial design to its restoration after the attack of 9/11, to the global events that have led up to the present day, his exceptional book tells the story of the Pentagon as it is inextricably linked to the evolving story of American military might and global military presence in war and in peace.Enormously rich in detail, stunning in its vivid descriptions and bold character portraits, expert in the scope and breadth of its knowledge, rich in its depth of expertise, The Pentagon is nonfiction that is written with a novelist's brilliance and a scholar's keenly honed sense of historical perspective. "A lifetime achievement by David Alexander." New York Times Book Review David Alexander Interview Questions FROM THE HISTORY CHANNEL America's Book of Secrets: The Pentagon ACT ONE     What is the Pentagon and what does it represent? Who is housed there, what do they and why does our national security rely on the Pentagon being fully operational? The Pentagon is among the world's largest government office buildings. It houses the headquarters of the US Defense Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff and the offices of a variety of defense agencies, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. It also houses the National Military Command Center which is one of the tactical nerve centers of global US military operations and has direct connections to other military outposts in the continental US and around the world. The Pentagon isn't a military base per se, but its day to day operations are necessary to sustain defense operations of all kinds. The Pentagon per se, i.e., the Building, is also considered a part of a larger ar