Reputation Is a Rumour. Character Is the Record.

Stanley McChrystal ran Joint Special Operations Command through the hunt for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Commanded American and international forces in Afghanistan. Thirty-five years in the Army, most of it at the sharp end of things most of us will never see. Then one Rolling Stone article in 2010 quoted him and his staff being candid about the President and Vice President, and it was over. Resigned within days. Decades of service, undone by a handful of paragraphs. He opens his new book with a line...