It takes the average reader 5 hours and 10 minutes to read Boondoggle by Lloyd Sparks
Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more
This is the story of how a bizarre turn of events pulled the author away from a successful career in the brain sciences into the murky world of the defense contractor, a phenomenon unique to our time. The US military now employs more contractors than soldiers when it goes to war, paying international corporations astonishing amounts of money to hire back former service members. This book offers a unique glimpse from the inside into this complex world. The author takes the reader through the events that dropped him into his first job as a contractor at the Military Intelligence school at Ft. Huachuca in 2006. There, he trained military professionals in the art of extracting reliable information from human sources. He also came to understand how the training system sidelined some of the best people, placing the worst into positions of power, taking us down paths of lawless savagery foreign to our self-concept as Americans. As he rose within in the system, the author was appointed Director of Instruction at the Military Intelligence School at Ft. Devens while simultaneously working as the Raytheon Site Lead. This dual Army-civilian job is where the byzantine complexity of the contractor-military relationship fully manifested itself. As the Devens project expanded and Raytheon became indispensable, the Army found itself in the difficult position of cutting back contractor support without failing in its mission. The author struggled with balancing the profit requirements of his civilian employer with the Army's need to minimize costs. The interplay of the forces of expanding and reducing contractor support played out in many interesting and often horrifying ways. The story offers insight into how the government has come to pour vast amounts of money into an expensive and largely unaccountable industry. It displays the schizophrenic nature of the system which is often staffed by the same individuals, sometimes in uniform and sometimes not. The reader is left to ponder whether our defense, our intelligence, and ultimately our security is better served by the Defense Department or the defense industry, and to what degree are the two actually the same.
Boondoggle by Lloyd Sparks is 310 pages long, and a total of 77,500 words.
This makes it 105% the length of the average book. It also has 95% more words than the average book.
The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 7 hours and 3 minutes to read Boondoggle aloud.
Boondoggle is suitable for students ages 12 and up.
Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.
When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.
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