Raising the Bar

""Once you get selected, work hard and graduate from the School of Advanced Military Studies you think this was an award and recognition of your rather successful professional military education. However, you soon realize that this is part of your professional credentials and it carries a lot more responsibility for how you will make commanders, peers and subordinates more successful. You appreciate the 'Jedi Knight' nickname but you discover that there is no 'Force' with you but just your well-educated competencies that turn most difficult tasks into real solutions. My deep gratitude for how SAMS forges every generation of the U.S. Army's and multinational officers into a 'Mind Key' to so many military operations.""--Lieutenant General Iulian Berdila, Romanian Army ""An essential account of how a visionary institution developed and forged those who would be the operational planners of modern American warfare. Kevin Benson--himself a combat leader, strategic planner, and former director of the School of Advanced Military Studies--provides a clear, candid, and deeply informed history of the small institution that changed the Army's culture. As a graduate of one of SAMS' earliest classes, I was fascinated by what I didn't know before reading this history; pages describing the intent, inherent academic rigor and intimidating course objectives that formed the course, but also the descriptions of personality conflicts, organizational coordination and intellectual brilliance that defined this school's formative years. While the book reveals the formation of a unique school and the training and education of those who would advise generals, shape campaign plans, and prepare for battlefield friction, it also provides insight into an Army that transformed with its graduates.""--Mark Hertling, Lieutenant General, US Army ""As an Army institution, the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) is without equal. Colonel Kevin Benson is a product of SAMS, ran the place, and took an Army to war. His brush strokes are personal. They bring this 'intellectual Ranger School' to life by illuminating the abstract as tangible expressions of vision, intent, and decision making. Great read ... another Benson success.""--James ""Spider"" Marks, Major General, US Army (Ret.) ""I was lucky enough to attend SAMS while Kevin Benson was the Director. We were studying at the time of the 'surge' in Iraq, and the start of high intensity combat in Afghanistan; very different to the Cold War days described in this book. But the urge to think hard and to learn freely was the same as when SAMS started, as part of that intellectual engine which drove the US Army from Vietnam to Desert Storm. From the 1970s, to Iraq and Afghanistan, to today's challenges, the course has become an institution, the beating heart of some of best parts of the US Army. This book tells the vital first chapter of that story.""--Major General Oliver Kingsbury, OBE, deputy commanding general US V Corps