This image is the cover for the book Good Captain

Good Captain

The veteran soldier, Pentagon advisor and White House staffer recounts his long and distinguished military career in this acclaimed memoir.

A combat soldier and leader in five wars, R. D. Hooker also served as a White House staff member in four different administrations. He retired in 2010 as the most decorated colonel in the US Army. Beginning with his enlistment at 18 in 1975, this memoir chronicles his experiences in the post-Vietnam Army as a young paratrooper, West Point cadet, and combatant in the many military conflicts which followed.

Hooker served in Grenada, Somalia. Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He played a key role in the response to 9/11 and returned to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. He commanded a paratroop company, battalion and brigade and served in the continental US, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia. When not deployed, he taught at West Point and served in several high-level Pentagon assignments and in the White House in the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

In The Good Captain, Hooker recounts his storied career with insights and lessons learned through five different conflicts. He also describes each of these campaigns from a strategic and policy perspective informed by his White House and Pentagon experiences as well as years of academic training.

R.D. Hooker

Colonel R. D. Hooker Jr. retired in 2010 after 32 years of enlisted and commissioned officer service. A veteran of five combat tours, he served exclusively in parachute units, commanding at company, battalion and brigade level and serving as a staff officer in the offices of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of the Army, and Chief of Staff of the Army, as well as the National Security Council in the White House. He also taught at West Point and the National War College.

Casemate Publishers