Every operation ends with an after-action review. What was supposed to happen, what did happen, why, and what to do differently next time. Units that take it seriously get better. Units that skip it repeat their mistakes.
A thirty-year military career is built from hundreds of those reviews, and almost none of them survive the retirement ceremony. The lessons live in the head of the person who learned them. The junior officers who could have used them never hear them, and neither does the executive in a civilian company facing the same problem in a different uniform.
A leadership book is the after-action review of a whole career. The best retired leaders write one, and a surprising number of them don’t write it alone.
Why do retired generals and admirals hire a ghostwriter?
Because commanding a theater and writing a book are different skills, and the second one takes a year most retired leaders would sooner spend elsewhere. They’ve written thousands of pages of orders, briefings and evaluations. A 70,000-word book that holds a civilian reader’s attention is another animal.
Look at the shelf.
General Norman Schwarzkopf wrote It Doesn’t Take a Hero with Peter Petre. General Tommy Franks wrote American Soldier with Malcolm McConnell. General Jim Mattis wrote Call Sign Chaos with Bing West, a Marine veteran and author in his own right. General Anthony Zinni’s career became Battle Ready, written with Tom Clancy and Tony Koltz. General David Petraeus wrote Conflict with the historian Andrew Roberts. The word “with” on the cover means a professional writer shaped the book, and nobody reads Mattis or Schwarzkopf any differently because of it.
Tampa has a particular claim on this shelf. MacDill Air Force Base has been home to U.S. Central Command since 1983 and to U.S. Special Operations Command since its founding in 1987. Schwarzkopf, Franks, Zinni, Mattis and Petraeus all led Central Command.
Admiral William McRaven led Special Operations Command from MacDill and wrote Make Your Bed, a long-running bestseller. Schwarzkopf retired to Tampa. General Frank McKenzie, Central Command’s commander until 2022, lives in South Tampa, leads the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, and published The Melting Point in 2024.
General Ann Dunwoody, the first woman in U.S. military history to reach four-star rank, lives in Tampa too. Her book, A Higher Standard, turns a 37-year Army career into leadership lessons.
I live in Safety Harbor, across the bay from MacDill. A lot of the people who could write the next book on that shelf live within a short drive of me.
What kind of book should a retired general write with a ghostwriter?
The first question is who the book is for. That decides everything else.
The leadership book takes lessons from command and makes them useful to anyone running people. (See also Admiral James Stavridis’s Sailing True North) McRaven’s Make Your Bed grew out of a commencement speech and became a book for graduates, parents and managers. (See also his memoir Sea Stories) General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams took what he learned commanding special operations forces and wrote it for corporate leaders. These books reach the widest audience and lead to the most speaking invitations. Readers outside the military buy them because the lessons carry over.
The command memoir tells the story of a career and the wars inside it. (See also McChrystal’s memoir My Share of the Task) Schwarzkopf’s and Franks’s books are that kind. They’re written for history, for the troops who served alongside the author and for the public.
The strategy book takes one problem in depth. Petraeus and McKenzie both wrote that kind, aimed at policy readers and students of war.
And the family book is written for children and grandchildren who never heard the stories. Sales don’t matter for this one. To the family, it’s the most important of the four.
| Book type | What it does | Who it’s for | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership book | Makes lessons from command useful to anyone running people | Graduates, parents, managers, corporate leaders | McRaven’s Make Your Bed; McChrystal’s Team of Teams |
| Command memoir | Tells the story of a career and its wars | History, fellow troops, the public | Schwarzkopf; Franks |
| Strategy book | Takes one problem in depth | Policy readers and students of war | Petraeus; McKenzie |
| Family book | Preserves stories never heard at home | Children and grandchildren | Sales don’t matter for this one |
Does a ghostwritten military book need security review?
If the author held a security clearance, almost certainly yes.
Former service members and Defense Department employees with clearances sign agreements requiring them to submit material for prepublication review before publishing anything that touches what they worked on. The review looks for classified information. It doesn’t decide whether the book is good.
That shapes how a ghostwriter works. Classified details never go into the interviews in the first place. I write only from material that can go in the book, and the review goes on the schedule from day one. It takes time. Operational details that were never classified can still endanger people, and a careful author leaves those out too.
I tell every client at the kickoff never to tell me anything they don’t want in the book. With a senior officer, it’s the first rule of the project.
How does a ghostwriter capture a senior officer’s voice?
By listening a lot before writing anything. I build every book from recorded interviews, an hour or two at a time, in person or on Zoom. After each session the client gets a written summary. Then the book goes chapter by chapter, and the author reads and marks each one before the next one starts.
Security review is planned from the first day, so the interviews and chapters only ever hold publishable material.
Senior officers are good interview subjects. They’re used to briefing, they organize their thoughts quickly and they know exactly what they think. The work is getting under the briefing. A general can describe a decision in two clean sentences. The book needs the night before the decision, who argued against it, what he was afraid of and what he’d do differently. I ask about the same event several times from different angles, because the polished version and the real one are rarely the same.
My grandfather was a Navy mess cook on the USS Oahu who was captured on Corregidor and spent three years and four months as a prisoner of the Japanese. I heard his story as a teenager over Christmas visits, and decades later turned his journal and the family’s memories into Behind the Wire. His journal survived. Most of what he never wrote down didn’t. Military stories have a way of disappearing with the people who lived them.
Every operation ends with an after-action review. A retired general’s leadership book is the after-action review of a whole career, written for everyone who comes next. – Richard LoweShare on X
Can a retired senior enlisted leader work with a ghostwriter?
Yes. More of them should.
I ask about the same event several times from different angles, because the polished version and the real one are rarely the same.
Command sergeants major, master chiefs and chief master sergeants spend careers turning young people into professionals. That knowledge is exactly what leadership books are made of. They know how to take a frightened eighteen-year-old and turn out a leader. Jack Tilley, the 12th Sergeant Major of the Army, wrote Soldier for Life about the lessons of his career. William Bainbridge, the 5th Sergeant Major of the Army, told his story in Top Sergeant with Dan Cragg. Command Sergeant Major Bennie Adkins, who received the Medal of Honor in 2014, wrote A Tiger among Us with journalist Katie Lamar Jackson about the 1966 fight for Camp A Shau.
Their books run more practical than a general’s and closer to the ground. Readers in business respond to that. A senior enlisted leader who ran training for thousands of troops has more to say about building people than most management consultants.
Should a retired officer use a ghostwriter or a credited co-author?
That’s the author’s call, and both are honest.
A credited collaborator, the “with” on the cover, tells readers a professional shaped the book. A ghostwriter stays invisible and writes entirely in the author’s voice. Either way, the ideas, the experience and the judgment are the author’s.
I keep every client arrangement confidential unless the client decides otherwise. For a book meant to build a speaking career, some authors prefer the credit. For a memoir written for family, most prefer to keep it simple.
My take
Any retired leader who held a clearance should build the prepublication security review into the schedule from day one. Then put your energy into the interviews and leave the pages to the writer. Senior enlisted leaders shouldn’t hold back either. Someone who ran training for thousands of troops knows more about building people than most consultants. For a book meant to build a speaking career, some authors want the writer credited on the cover, and for a family memoir most keep it simple.
Where should a retired military leader start a ghostwritten book?
Decide who the book is for. Then book an hour of conversation.
Most leaders discover in the first interview that they have more material than one book can hold.
I spent 33 years in enterprise technology, 20 of them as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s, and I’ve ghostwritten 54+ books for clients. I’m also writing profiles of retired military leaders around Tampa Bay, always with respect for the service behind them. Veterans writing about their own service will find more in hiring a ghostwriter for a veteran’s memoir and in why veterans shouldn’t wait. My Tampa ghostwriter page covers meeting in person.
When you’re ready, my ghostwriting service covers the whole book, and the Book Discovery Intensive is the place to start if you’re still deciding what the book should be. The ghostwriting hub covers cost, contracts and process. You ran after-action reviews for a whole career. Write the last one.
Senior officers who want their book written with a professional can start with The Ghostwriting Advantage. It draws on more than 54 books I have ghostwritten.
Frequently Asked Questions
- MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. Air Force, MacDill AFB
- Frequently Asked Questions for Department of Defense Prepublication Security and Policy Reviews, U.S. Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services
- Army promotes four-star general, U.S. Army
