It's one thing to write an appreciative history of the Pentagon that hews to the official viewpoint and rarely deviates from orthodoxy. It's another to write an account that pulls no punches and genuflects to nobody, that respects no authority higher than the absolute truth.

David Alexander has written such a book. He has practically singlehandedly ferreted out the ground truth that makes up both literal and figurative foundations of The Building. He has written the truth when the truth was noble, and he has also written the truth when it was less than noble. But he has always upheld the truth as his only guide.

David Alexander has also brought his keen and discriminating eye for lyrical prose to his account of the Pentagon, truly making this outstanding work of nonfiction "history as the novel, the novel as history."

Alexander has also departed from a standard chronological approach to narrative history. In tackling as large and ambitious a project as The Building, Alexander developed a writing plan that replaced an easy and often-used sequential storyline approach with a more complex narrative scheme that was designed to give far greater scope and depth to the narrative he envisioned for his book. It seemed the only approach worthy of a subject as large, as timely, as challenging and as supremely important as the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the global wars in which these icons of military power and global reach have played key and decisive strategic roles.

In telling the Pentagon's story Alexander abandoned the strict chronological storytelling format characteristic of other works and wove together a tapestry in prose that drew on disciplines ranging from the technicalities of the building construction trades, to the secrets of stealth warfare, to the intricacies of foreign policy, to the stratagems and behind-the-scenes gambits of international leadership, to the workings of the defense firms that together make up the global defense sector. Nor has he left out detailed coverage of the diverse personalities from Franklin Roosevelt to Robert Gates who envisioned, built and guided the actions and policies of the Pentagon from its origins to its present day operations, and who have launched it into the future.