Into the storm : A study in command is the first in an extraordinary series of nonfiction books by Tom Clancy—a look deep into the operational art of war as seen through the eyes of some of America's outstanding commanders.

For more than a dozen years, Clancy has explored the military and security issues of our time in a brilliant series of novels. Now he takes us into the hearts and minds of four remarkable American military leaders to show us the nature of war and command from the inside. Based on the story of the greatest American military triumph since World War II—the victory over Iraq in the Gulf War—these books are also much more: they are studies in command and responsibility; of how leaders learn and grow; of how they forge people, elements, and forces together into a campaign of power and precision.

General Frederick M. Franks, Jr., commanded the armor and infantry of VII Corps, the main coalition force that broke the back of Iraq's Republican Guard. Never before have the land war, and the art of maneuver warfare itself, been explored so incisively and in such rich, provocative detail. Clancy and Franks take us deep inside the war councils and command posts and up to the front lines, to show us a war that few people even knew, that television never showed.

Beyond that, however, Into the Storm is the account of transformations—the transformation of an American army traumatized by the Vietnam War and that of a man devastated by the loss of a leg in that war. The former became once again the world's most powerful force; the latter, one of his country's most honored commanders—the first amputee active duty general since the Civil War. Together, the story of that army and that man, and the wars they fought, make Into the Storm an instant classic of military history.