Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts ─ The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground

In Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, acclaimed journalist Robert D. Kaplan continues his exploration of the American military's challenging and varied commitments around the world.

From protecting sea lanes, to providing disaster relief, to preparing for potential military confrontation with North Korea and Iran, Kaplan describes the astonishing, vital, and often unacknowledged operations regularly performed by American military personnel in the air, at sea, and on the ground. Vivid and illuminating, this book takes us deep into the highly technical and exotic cultures of the armed forces, telling soldiers' stories from the perspective of the troops on the ground.

Robert D. Kaplan is chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm, and the author of fourteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate; Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power; Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History; and Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for more than a quarter-century. In 2011 and 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named Kaplan among the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

From 2009 to 2011, he served under Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as a member of the Defense Policy Board. Since 2008, he has been a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis.