RD does not equal FC. Brace Barber republishes Ranger School, No Excuse Leadership, which has become a classic, and he recently edited Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War claiming it was a rough draft.
You may remember that Brace published Ranger School, No Excuse Leadership 20 years ago as the first book to illustrate the leadership value of Army Ranger School. COL Tex Turner ’59 and several other graduates tell of their adventures and struggles through the ordeal and tie the experiences to the invaluable leadership lessons they learned. In 2003, J. Wiley and Sons published the book in hard cover, where it has remained for 17 years. Earlier this month, Brace regained the rights to publish the book as a paperback. Ranger School Book. Brace said, “The original intent of the book was to illustrate what Ranger School is like and to tell some funny stories. The project ended up as a book explaining how leadership capabilities are developed through the designed environment of duress.”
More recently, Brace completed a major reorganization of The Art of War based on the modern military strategy planning format. Brace argues that original book has some interesting principles, but in its original format is nearly impossible to use to create an effective strategy. The new work is titled The Art of War, Organized for Decision Making. Brace insists that, "this is not an insult to the original manuscript, but rather it is an intelligent and practical reorganization that allows the user to draw the full value out of Sun Tzu's guidance." While at West Point, I started to read The Art of War but quickly put it down as a useless list of proverbs without context. At the age of 40, after some life experience, I picked it up again with a much different response. The principles do fit nicely into the MCDMP, but it was a lot of work to get them there.
Brace is also the author of TESTED, A New Strategy for Keeping Kids in the Faith.