Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

The Warhead by Jeffrey E. Stern follows the life of Paveway, the laser-guided bomb first built by Weldon Word after American pilots kept failing to destroy North Vietnam’s Dragon’s Jaw bridge. Richard Hilton’s missions show why the Air Force wants a smart weapon that can hit one small target and keep pilots away from enemy fire. Once Paveway works, its path moves through a massive swath of conflicts on multiple continents, from Libya to Kosovo, Iraq and beyond. As decades pass, Kathy Kelly’s time in Baghdad places civilians inside that same military history, and Luis Rueda’s CIA work shows how target intelligence feeds the weapon. As the movement of Paveway evolves and an invention made as a wartime fix morphs into a standard tool of American power, the effects of that evolution are conveyed in a cataclysmic fashion.

The Warhead by Jeffrey E. Stern is so darn immersive that it actually reads like fiction, and that might just be the biggest compliment a non-fiction account can receive. In the interest of full disclosure, I was born and raised in a country that has been deeply impacted by the GBU-12 Paveway II, and so I was drawn to the book from a different perspective than most other readers would be. There is one person in particular in the book that I admire. That's Kathy Kelly, who puts herself in danger, not always intentionally, to help those who desperately need it. She worked with women in jail and then embedded herself in West Asia to carry on her activism and aid. Stern describes her compassionately, and she is the brightest beacon in the bunch. Equally fascinating from a macro level is the behind-the-scenes politicking, which Stern makes near cinematic in desert command tents and situation rooms. Informative and wholly absorbing, The Warhead is a worthy read. Very highly recommended.