Dr. John Nagl is a Rhodes Scholar who went to war. The official biography of the retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel cites his service in both Operation Desert Storm and the current Iraq conflict. What he learned from war is outlined in three volumes: He is a co-author of the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual; he wrote Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and, now, he has written Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice.

The continuing theme of his books is that soldiers must be prepared for the current war, not the previous war. Peter Maass, in a 2004 New York Times profile titled "Professor Nagl's War," wrote that Nagl, a teacher at military schools, "approaches war pragmatically and philosophically, as a soldier and a scholar."

Influential Kirkus Reviews says that Nagle's latest book, Knife Fights, "delivers a lively memoir that combines battlefield experiences with military politics." Nagl has been on that battlefield, commanding a tank platoon during the 1991 Gulf War. And his work on Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife, resulted in his appointment to Gen David Petraeus' team that would create what is regarded as "the landmark 2007 counterinsurgency field manual."