Journey: Memoirs of an Air Force Chief of Staff

An uncensored account of General Schwartz's term as the wartime US Air Force Chief of Staff under presidents Bush and Obama.


The General’s dysfunctional home life drove him to apply to the Air Force Academy almost 40 years ago, where he was provided with a new family and sense of worth he had never gotten from his own father. This purpose has driven the General throughout his remarkable career, taking him to Alaska, the Pentagon, and Germany; to Florida during Hurricane Opal, and has also allowed him to work alongside Presidents Bush and Obama and Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Ashton Carter.Journey is a book about leadership. It is packed with the General’s lessons from life in the military: breaking the mold, flying uncharted airspace, battles from Iraq to the Pentagon, Afghanistan to Congress. It’s about pushing limits in an era of diminishing budgets and fewer resources to fuel the furnace of innovation. He chronicles the phenomenal story of the evolution of the US special operations, such as what was achieved when taking down Bin Laden. The General discusses the controversial new technologies that have been allowing America to build new capabilities in cyber warfare. Many believe General Schwartz’s greatest legacy will be the dramatic escalation of the drone program. He is a staunch advocate for it and this book will explain why.