A now-retired career military officer who has moved on to teaching, as he is professor of history and international relations at Boston University, Andrew Bacevich has come to be known as an astute, perceptive analyst of U.S. military and political affairs. His first books, The Limits of Power and The New American Militarism, were each newsmaking books. He is here tonight with his newest work, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (Metropolitan/Holt). "Bacevich offers an unsparing, cogent, and important critique of assumptions guiding American military policy. These central tenets, the 'Washington rules' ... have dominated national security policy since the start of the cold war and have condemned the U.S. to 'insolvency and perpetual war.' Bacevich argues that while the Washington rules found their most pernicious expression in the Bush doctrine of preventive war, Barack Obama's expansion of the Afghan War is also cause for pessissim: 'We should be grateful to him for making at least one thing unmistakably clear: to imagine that Washington will ever tolerate second thoughts about the Washington rules is to engage in willful self-deception. Washington has too much to lose.'" – Publishers Weekly.