Business: Strategic control, by the book: "Strategic control, by the book
A St. Petersburg man brings military and strategy books back into print. The works are must-reads for intelligence experts and generals-in-training.
By KRIS HUNDLEY, Times Staff Writer
Published October 4, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Jamie Hailer is supplying America's military leaders and intelligence specialists with expertise on dealing with global terrorism from the comfort of his home near downtown St. Petersburg.
Far from being some James Bond character, with real-life, cloak-and-dagger experiences, Hailer, 37, is the owner of a boutique publishing house that specializes in resurrecting highly regarded but out-of-print books on military history and strategy.
Hailer's best seller is a 40-year-old work on counterinsurgency written by a French army officer who served in China, Southeast Asia and Algeria. Since starting his company as a sideline in March, Hailer has sold about 2,400 copies of David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice to everyone from intel experts to generals-in-training.
'I kind of stumbled on a subculture of retired CIA and Army guys who are pulling their hair out about us blowing it in Iraq like we did in Vietnam,' said Hailer (pronounced Hi-ler). 'When they found out I was publishing this book, they pushed it like crazy.'
Rick Newton, an instructor at the Joint Special Operations University at Hurlburt Field in Florida's Panhandle ordered 100, then e-mailed his buddies at West Point and the Naval War College; they also wanted the book.
Newton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said he had been looking for the Galula book for a couple of years before being put in touch with Hailer.
'It's the only book I'd found which takes strategic-level goals and links them to what soldiers on the ground have to do,' Newton said of the book, written in 1964 while Galula was on a fellowship at Harvard. 'You read it and scratch your head and say, 'He got it right.''
Next thing Hailer knew, the head of the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where the Army trains its top brass, ordered 1,500 copies, saying he wanted to put the book in the hands of every student."
A St. Petersburg man brings military and strategy books back into print. The works are must-reads for intelligence experts and generals-in-training.
By KRIS HUNDLEY, Times Staff Writer
Published October 4, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Jamie Hailer is supplying America's military leaders and intelligence specialists with expertise on dealing with global terrorism from the comfort of his home near downtown St. Petersburg.
Far from being some James Bond character, with real-life, cloak-and-dagger experiences, Hailer, 37, is the owner of a boutique publishing house that specializes in resurrecting highly regarded but out-of-print books on military history and strategy.
Hailer's best seller is a 40-year-old work on counterinsurgency written by a French army officer who served in China, Southeast Asia and Algeria. Since starting his company as a sideline in March, Hailer has sold about 2,400 copies of David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice to everyone from intel experts to generals-in-training.
'I kind of stumbled on a subculture of retired CIA and Army guys who are pulling their hair out about us blowing it in Iraq like we did in Vietnam,' said Hailer (pronounced Hi-ler). 'When they found out I was publishing this book, they pushed it like crazy.'
Rick Newton, an instructor at the Joint Special Operations University at Hurlburt Field in Florida's Panhandle ordered 100, then e-mailed his buddies at West Point and the Naval War College; they also wanted the book.
Newton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said he had been looking for the Galula book for a couple of years before being put in touch with Hailer.
'It's the only book I'd found which takes strategic-level goals and links them to what soldiers on the ground have to do,' Newton said of the book, written in 1964 while Galula was on a fellowship at Harvard. 'You read it and scratch your head and say, 'He got it right.''
Next thing Hailer knew, the head of the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where the Army trains its top brass, ordered 1,500 copies, saying he wanted to put the book in the hands of every student."
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