'The Accidental Guerrilla, a brilliant study by former Australian army colonel David Kilcullen ... The book testifies to a great deal of hard work. Not only has Kilcullen had a privileged vantage point on the most important conflicts of our era, he has been thinking intently, reading widely but purposefully and taking notes the whole time. The result is probably the best book available on contemporary conflicts and how to fight them.'

Whit Mason (Australian Literary Review)

'The Accidental Guerrilla is a master class in counterinsurgency from a man who, as much as anyone, is responsible for recent successes in Iraq.'

Jim Chiavelli, (Boston Globe)

'Kilcullen's compelling argument merits wide attention.'

(Publishers Weekly [starred review])

'This book should be required reading for every American soldier, as well as anyone involved in the war on terror. Kilcullen's central concept of the 'accidental guerrilla' is brilliant and the policy prescriptions that flow from it important. And that's not all; the book has many more insights drawn from various battlefields.'

Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek)

'Kilcullen skillfully interprets the future of counterinsurgency, the proper use of military force and what we must learn from our losses and mistakes ... After reading The Accidental Guerrilla, one is left to wonder why the Pentagon did not listen to his sage advice back in 2003, instead of that of all those cheery optimists who predicted the Iraqis would greet the American forces with flowers.'

(The New York Times)

'For a wider perspective on the lessons drawn over the past seven years of the “war on terror”, the reader can do no better than turn to Mr Kilcullen’s excellent book. The Accidental Guerrilla has an anthropologist’s sense of social dynamics and a reporter’s eye for telling detail. If T.E. Lawrence evoked the means of waging irregular warfare in his 1926 classic, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Mr Kilcullen describes the practitioner’s art of combating insurgents. For instance, his account of how the Americans use soft and hard power to pacify parts of eastern Afghanistan — combining road-building with focused operations — should be compulsory reading in military academies on both sides of the Atlantic.'

(Economist )

'rewarding and stimulating ...'

Clive Williams (Canberra Times)

‘Kilcullen’s heroes are soldier-intellectuals, both real (T.E. Lawrence) and fictional (Robert Jordan, the protagonist of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls). On his bookshelves, alongside monographs by social scientists such as Gluckman and Evans-Pritchard, is a knife that he took from a militiaman he had just ambushed in East Timor. "If I were a Muslim, I’d probably be a jihadist," Kilcullen said as we sat in his office. "The thing that drives these guys –– a sense of adventure, wanting to be part of the movement, wanting to be in the big movement of history that’s happening now –- that’s the same thing that drives me, you know?".’

(The New Yorker)

'David Kilcullen's Accidental Guerilla is a richly reported and well written account of the new way of war of the 21st century; how those 'small wars' will differ from previous conflicts and what they have in common with past insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. Analytically very sharp and also an engrossing read, Kilcullen's book is destined to become a classic study of warfare in our new century.'

(Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know, is CNN's national security analyst)

'... this is an important book. Those with the unenviable task of dealing with the mess of today's Afghanistan and Pakistan will ignore it at their peril.'

(The Weekend Australian)

'There are few authorities on this growing form of warfare, but Kilcullen is one of the best. One for those who wish to form their own opinions of such conflicts.'

Piers Ackerman (The Daily Telegraph)

‘[The Prime Minister] has also been impressed by the work of David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer and academic anthropologist who now works for the US State Department. ... Kilcullen’s core belief is that the war on terror is better described as a "global counter-insurgency": he refers to the "information battlefield" but insists that the West’s strategy must be radically localised; each region, each village, needs a different counter-terrorist tactic. ... The Kilcullen Doctrine on winning "hearts and minds" is based not on making local people feel affection for you, but on persuading them that you can protect them better than the enemy.’

(The Spectator)

'This lucid and compelling book describes the challenges in contemporary warfare as counterinsurgency and counterterrorism merge, and conventional conflicts recede. It is an important primer for the decade.'

(Philip Bobbitt, author of Terror and Consent)

'David Kilcullen, man of action and man of ideas, has produced a rare—and indispensible—guide to understanding and winning the so-called "war on terror" by combining ideas of military theory with those of culture and tradition among tribal peoples.'

(Professor Akbar Ahmed, Chair of Islamic Studies, American University, Washington DC)