Book Review: Command Attention: Promoting Your Organization the Marine Corps Way

By special arrangement with the Naval Institute, we will get 100 of the books prior to official release and they will be on sale at a special price of $20 each at our annual conference in Hampton, VA this month. When released to the public the price will be $26.95. Keith will be available for a book signing; his royalties for all conference sales have been designated for the USMCCCA.

By Jack Paxton, Executive Director, USMCCCA

We don’t normally do book reviews even though we read constantly. We do write letters to the editor when provoked and stories on our favorite space-a flying trips for Leatherneck from time to time. Keith Oliver’s just-out “Command Attention” is a whole different matter, however.

Having served 20 years in Marine Corps public affairs, the first 16 enlisted, the last four as a PAO. I have said many times that the first 12 were a struggle, including the early days as a CC in Korea. My teachers were a mix of World War II vets and scribes from newspapers. Some good. Some bad. Until I worked for the late Bob Morrisey in the early 1960s, I had no idea what public affairs really meant.

When I started reading Keith’s “mighty-mite” two nights ago I could have sworn I was back in Mo’s office at Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii. This 129-page tome mirrors many of the things Mo espoused. Why not? Keith freely admits that we had the same great mentor who became the first “PA rabbi” for a Marine Commandant.

Keith, however, takes our profession many steps further than Mo or I ever thought possible. While we labored with dial-up phones, portable typewriters and mimeograph machines, he takes us into the cyber age of computers, digital phones and cameras, twixing, DVIDS, on-base CATV – the whole realm of today’s mass communication. Still in all, his message in Command Attention echoes what the first Denig Demons were told at the beginning of World War II: Tell the story of the individual Marine so his home-town knows what he is doing.

As a “tribal elder” of an organization that Keith gives much credit to, we work with both the old-timers from World War II and today’s story teller and picture taker-warriors. Much of what he espouses is gospel in many commands. Others, like the 10 percent that never gets the word, are still struggling as many did in my day.

Keith takes you on a journey from his youth in Eustis, FL through his rise as a young PAO with “warts” to his final days as a highly-successful Marine Corps “bird” colonel. As any good word- smith does, he names many of the names of those he served with and learned from along the way.

Command Attention is a great read and, as noted war correspondent Joe Galloway says in his Foreward: “If the organization is not the U. S. Marine Corps, you have your job cut out for you, and this book will make it easier.”

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P.S. The USMCCCA and its members are featured throughout the book. By special arrangement with the Naval Institute, we will get 100 of the books prior to official release and they will be on sale at a special price of $20 each at our annual conference in Hampton, VA this month. When released to the public the price will be $26.95. Keith will be available for a book signing; his royalties for all conference sales have been designated for the USMCCCA.