TL;DR
General Stanley McChrystal’s career memoir, from West Point to commanding Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the international force in Afghanistan. It’s a long, detailed account of how he changed the way his task force fought.
Stanley McChrystal spent five years running a task force most Americans never heard of. My Share of the Task is where he finally told the story.
Portfolio published it in January 2013, about two and a half years after he retired, and it became a New York Times bestseller.
What is My Share of the Task about?
It begins at West Point in the 1970s and follows McChrystal through the post-Vietnam Army and into the Ranger regiment and special operations. He commanded a battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment in the mid-1990s and then the whole regiment from 1997 to 1999.
The center of the book is his command of Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008, when he rebuilt the task force fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. That section includes the long hunt for the group’s leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006. McChrystal explains how a slow, careful organization learned to move at the speed of its enemy, and he names the people who helped it change and the ones who resisted.
Later chapters cover his year commanding the international force in Afghanistan and his work with Afghan leaders. Throughout, he weighs the leaders he served with and the changes that made a rigid institution adapt. He’s generous to many and blunt about some.
Who is Stanley McChrystal?
McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976, commanded the 75th Ranger Regiment, led Joint Special Operations Command and served as Director of the Joint Staff. He commanded U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan from June 2009 until June 2010 and retired that July as a four-star general. He later founded the McChrystal Group, joined corporate boards including JetBlue’s, taught at Yale and wrote several more books, including Leaders, Risk and On Character.
His years running special operations were years most of the public never saw while they were happening. The memoir was his own account of them.
How was My Share of the Task received?
With a big launch. McChrystal went on CBS Sunday Morning and The Daily Show, the New York Times covered the book and the Wall Street Journal reviewed it. In its first days it climbed to number 15 on Amazon.
The paperback came out a year later, in January 2014, at nearly 500 pages.
Why read My Share of the Task before Team of Teams?
It’s the full-length command memoir, and it shows what that form asks of an author.
The book runs more than 450 pages, with the patience to explain how an organization worked and why it had to change.
It’s also the source for his later book, Team of Teams. One career produced two very different books, a memoir for history and a leadership book for business. Many retired leaders have both in them.
Reading them in order shows how one career becomes two books. The memoir tells you what happened and who did it. Team of Teams takes the same years and asks what other organizations can use.
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