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Podcast: New Books in Military History
Episode: Jeffrey J. Matthews, "Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot" (U Notre Dame Press, 2019)
Description: Until he passed away in 2021, Colin Powell was revered as one of America's most trusted and admired leaders. Jeffrey J. Matthews' Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot (U Notre Dame Press, 2019) demonstrates that Powell's decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate is crucial to understanding his astonishing rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to the highest echelons of military and political power, including his roles as the country's first Black national security advisor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and secretary of state.Once an aimless, ambitionless teenager who barely graduated from college, Powell became an extraordinarily effective and st...