KOLTZ, Tony

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

(With Tom Clancy and Carl Stiner) Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces, Putnam (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Tom Clancy and Tony Zinni) Battle Ready, Putnam (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Tony Zinni) The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of two books in the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series: The Vampire Express and Terror Island.

ADAPTATIONS:

Battle Ready was adapted as an audiobook by Simon & Schuster Audio, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tony Koltz has cowritten books on military subjects, two of them with best-selling author Tom Clancy and two with retired Marine general Tony Zinni. Battle Ready, written by Clancy, Zinni, and Koltz, tells Zinni's life story, focusing on his military career. The narrative does not proceed chronologically, but starts out with his activities during the late 1990s, when he was chief of the United States Central Command. It then backtracks to Zinni's formative experiences as a soldier in Vietnam during the late 1960s. He went on to another career as a diplomat, and in this position traveled to many locations on sensitive missions, including Somalia, Indonesia, and the Middle East. Zinni offers his take on key global power figures, including Yasir Arafat, Ariel Sharon, and Mohammed Aidid. In 2004, Zinni later drew attention for appearing on national television and voicing harsh criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq.

Reviewing Battle Ready for the New York Times, Philip Caputo found it somewhat disjointed and too full of military jargon and acronyms, but he added that readers willing to persevere "will find that Zinni is one of the more interesting men produced by the American military, with a supple mind that quickly adjusted to the new realities brought about by the collapse of the Soviet empire." Reviewing Battle Ready for the Naval War College Review, Henry Bartlett called it an "excellent book" that will "appeal to any reader interested in the U.S. military, the U.S. Marine Corps, and national security affairs."

Working with Koltz, Zinni offered his thoughts on the Iraq war in book form in The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose. Drawing on his military and diplomatic experiences, Zinni illuminates the ways in which the world has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union, and suggests that American foreign policy has not kept pace with those changes. The Battle for Peace offers "a clear analysis and plan for the future," according to Michael C. Miller in the Library Journal.