Bathtub Admirals Jeff Huber $24.95, 256 pp, 311

Those of you familiar with Jeff Huber's commentaries on U.S. political and military ineptitude — they appear regularly on ePluribus Media and on Pen and Sword — may be partially prepared for this incredible saga, but the story he has to tell is much worse than you expect and much funnier. He has written a hilarious parody of the U.S. Navy and an antic send-up of modern military fiction.

The book covers the period from the last days of the Cold War to the beginning of the present Bush administration, through the Clinton Administration—the same twenty years that Huber served as operations officer of Carrier Air Wing Eight and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), and commanding officer of Airborne Early Warning Squadron 124—from the point of view of his hero Jack Hogan, whose naval career path to parallels that of the author. Huber says that the resemblance between him and Jack ends there—but he has infused his story with the kind of detail that lends verisimilitude to his tale. It is full of anecdotes based on experiences that he lived though and the tall tales and naval gossip that enlivened dull nights at sea, not excluding the brainless, don't-ask-don't-tell policy and the bumbling efforts to cover up the Tailhook scandal. Huber says that in the navy you never get a straight story about anything.

Many of the incidents in the book are pure slapstick, from the beginning when Jack is too drunk to find his own stateroom. One of the zany themes that Huber exploits, in a comedic style reminiscent of Saturday Night Live is the way that everything on board a ship is labeled differently than in the real world, beginning with stairs that are called ladders. "Levels turned into decks when you got to the first deck, which was the hangar deck, also known as the hangar bay. Deck numbers go bigger as you went down—second deck, third deck, and so on. Level numbers got bigger as you went up from the hangar deck, except that as you went up levels, you used different kinds of numbers to count them: O1 level, O2 level, et cetera."

Caveat emptor! This is not a jolly romp about a bunch of Navy guys who get their kicks from exposing the foibles of the top brass. Nor is it a techno-romance of the sort written by Tom Clancy, with Harrison Ford in the hero's role. Huber has a serious point to make to about the kind of criminal incompetence of the U.S. military that has characterized the service during much of the cold war and since. Jack takes part in Cold-War exercises against the Soviet navy, the bombing of Kosovo and over-flights in the Iraqi no-fly zone as well as training exercises on the home front. In every instance he is witness to incompetence and a series of near disasters.

Huber has a lot to say about the cluelessness of naval officers who are more interested in bureaucratic in-fighting than in improving U.S. military capabilities, who exaggerate the enemy force and cover up their own mistakes and stupidity in order to build their own bureaucratic empires and gain personal advantage. In the interest of telling a good story, he exaggerates and embellishes and goes for the ridiculous, but his purpose is not just to entertain, though entertain he does. In the military as elsewhere, power corrupts, and abuses follow, and that is definitely part of the story Huber has to tell. He says that he wants to expose the arrogance that has led America to where we now are, "This belief that we Americans can achieve any objective through the use of military force."

Huber says that he has been working on the book, on-and-off since 1999, shortly after his own experiences in the Kosovo war years. It was definitely time well spent. It bears comparison with Joseph Heller's, Catch 22, where stories are also told several times from varying points of view, and the humor has a serious purpose.

Now a retired Naval Commander, Huber saw active service for more than 20 years, from the end of the cold-war through the Clinton Administration,

Since he retired, his analyses and satires of foreign policy and military affairs have appeared in Proceedings, Jane's Fighting Ships and other periodicals. Some of his essays have been required student reading at the United States Naval War College, where he earned a master's degree in national security studies in 1995. His commentaries on the current strategic situation appear at Military.com and Aviation week.

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About the Reviewer: Carol White is Book Review Editor for ePluribus Media. She has edited a small science journal and is presently a free-lance writer, who covers the arts and related matters for her local newspaper.

ePluribus Media Contributors: Cho, Aaron Barlow, GreyHawk