Shooting at the Moon is an amazing book about the long, secret, topsy-turny war in Laos. While Vietnam was a meatgrinder, feeding a whole generation into the blind rationality of 'search and destroy', Laos was the spook's war, a struggle by a handful of CIA idealists in a forgotten nation. At first it was just Bill Lair, using his Thai PARU special forces to train up a Montagnard army under Meo General Vang Pao, successfully out-guerrillaing the North Vietnamese Army. But as the Ho Chi Minh trail stretched down through Laos, the war grew into a supermarket war, with 440,000 tonnes of bombs per year raining down on Laos more or less at random. Vang Pao's people were ground down to nothing by the weight of the Pathet Lao and their Vietnamese backers, and in the end, the war came to nothing-under the terms of the Geneva accords America had never been in Laos, so it could never leave. Warner is deeply knowledgeable about his topic, combining political and military history with artistic impressions of an exotic time and place, and the recollections of major figures. Simply great!