The Soldier Spy - by Mark Riebling (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The larger-than-life exploits of Walter Patrick Lang--the Green Beret at the center of America's covert conflicts from the Cold War to the War on Terror.

"Full of profound observations about the nature of conflict and nations and Lang's remarkable experiences and wisdom, this is a tour de force that deserves a wide readership." --Booklist (starred review)

Army Colonel Walter Patrick Lang led the life that many men would love to live. He faced firefights on three continents and led a band of Pentagon ruffians who stalked some of the world's worst villains. When America was losing the War on Terror, he leveraged the lessons of his life to correct the course of his country. Yet only after the action, as the tape ran back, did he question the stories that both he and his nation were living.

A decorated combat officer, founder of West Point's Arab Studies program, and senior Pentagon counterterrorist, he built target folders on famous names. Guevara, killed. Khomeini, contained. Gaddafi, chastened. Saddam, nudged toward the gallows by a hand he never saw. But his gifts were not always rewarded. He chose the Army over Harvard, then was spit on as he shipped out to Vietnam. The same maverick streak that drove his successes led to his downfall.

Informed by a decade of conversations with Lang and his colleagues, The Soldier Spy is not only an epic of wars and spies; it is a moral reckoning with the vanity of spreading freedom by force, an elegy for ideals of manhood that formed an extraordinary warrior, and a warning flare for all who will inherit and defend the American dream.

Review Quotes

"The Soldier Spy is mandatory reading for everyone in the professions of arms or intelligence and for everyone who wants to understand American power. Riebling masterfully crystalizes the national experience in this compelling life of a covert warrior who shaped the fates of foreign nations and America itself. You'll emerge wiser for the time spent in these pages." --Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL sniper, New York Times bestselling author of The Terminal List

"Riebling chronicles the man [Lang] and his times within an in-depth look at the role defense intelligence played during the Cold War and the Global War on Terrorism. He expertly blends biography and military history from Lang's perspective; he viewed war as a humanities problem that must be understood in terms of other cultures. . . . Full of profound observations about the nature of conflict and nations and Lang's remarkable experiences and wisdom, this is a tour de force that deserves a wide readership." --Booklist (starred review)

"I worked against al-Qaeda and Chinese spies beside Pat Lang, introduced Mark Riebling to him, and knew half the man. This book gave me the whole. Pat walked point for Pax Americana in a career of rare breadth and danger, and he won not just through violence but through empathy. He was a Green Beret who read war through Homer and who loved the peoples his nation betrayed. The comfort is that we had such a warrior. The lesson is in how we ignored him--and how we continue to repeat the same SNAFU."
--R.P. Eddy, former National Security Council Director for Counterterrorism, author of Warnings

"Pat Lang was an important but ultimately divisive figure in defense intelligence. Mark Riebling has given us a beautifully written and richly detailed biography of the life, mind, and times of the man that will compel national security professionals and general readers alike to come to terms with it." --Michael Vickers, former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence

"The Soldier Spy illuminates the triumphs and follies of U.S. military intelligence through the career of a truly heroic public servant. It is well-written, thoroughly researched, and worth every minute you spend with it." --Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn and What it Is Like to Go to War

"Based on more than a decade of original research, Mark Riebling has written an absolutely captivating, vivid, and provocative biography of intelligence legend Walter Lang, a humanist and warrior who kept faith with his foreign partners even when his government did not. It is a sweeping and incisive portrait of a conflicted patriot trying to hold fast to his moral compass through a half-century of mercurial American foreign policy." --Stephen R. Platt, author of The Raider

"With the care of an archaeologist and the panache of a master painter, Riebling restores the buried biography of an American Achilles. The result is a triumph like The Right Stuff, The Power Broker, and A Perfect Spy." --Warren Fahy, author of Fragment

"In The Soldier Spy, Mark Riebling reveals in fascinating detail the incredible life of one of America's most complicated and controversial spies. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of intelligence as well as the history of the United States as a superpower." --Mark Moyar, author of Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968

"The Soldier Spy is written on a vast canvas and it is a vast achievement. The battles bring to mind Stephen Crane, the espionage Graham Greene, the politics Machiavelli, the strategy Clausewitz. Through the eyes of the one man who fought, taught, and thought with equal facility, Mark Riebling offers the definitive valediction to the American Century." --Aaron Haspel, author of Everything: A Book of Aphorisms

"A masterfully crafted epic, convincingly showing how America misapprehends its enemies through the prism of its national mythology--a chronic failure of imagination that has had brutal consequences." --Keith Gandal, author of The Gun and the Pen

"Mark Riebling is an amazing writer and he's written a military masterpiece. It's about fighting adversaries you don't understand, reconciling official duty and personal honor, loving your wife and family, and finding your purpose in life. This is the best book I've read since Myrer's Once an Eagle and should be required reading for all generals, soldiers, and cadets. The Soldier Spy is a book for our time and for all time." --LTC (R) Nate Sassaman, author of Warrior King

"Mark Riebling has unearthed the rich, dark history of an American Lawrence of Arabia in this important and absolutely astounding account of deeply classified special operations from Vietnam through Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. The Soldier Spy is so good, it should be this winter's fireside book and this summer's beach book. It's every bit as compelling as any John le Carré you might pick up." --Jeff Stein, Editor-in-Chief, SpyTalk

"Riebling's narrative mixes cinematic scenes of Lang's adventures, like his induction into a Montagnard tribe during a ceremony where he drank buffalo blood, with incisive critiques of unthinking assumptions within the foreign-policy establishment about what motivates people to fight. The result is both a gripping spy saga and an indictment of American hubris." --Publishers Weekly

"An instructive biography of a national security lifer who battled foreign enemies and Beltway hubris . . . Riebling persuasively depicts Lang as a nimble-minded defense intelligence analyst. . . A consequential military career bears hard truths about a superpower's trajectory." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

MARK RIEBLING served as Research Director in the NYPD-affiliated Center for Policing Terrorism for a decade after the 9/11 attacks. He is the author of Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA and Church of Spies, and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in New York City.