A riveting follow-up to the best-selling Peacekeeper, including MacKenzie's provocative views on leadership and the current state of the Canadian Armed Forces. Since retiring from the Armed Forces, Lewis MacKenzie has not stayed out of the spotlight but continues to speak his mind. In this straight-talking memoir, he traces his post-military career as an international commentator on military affairs, a consultant to the Irish government and a federal political candidate. And here, he answers his critics, including journalist Carol Off for her criticism of his handling of the UN mission in Bosnia. In a hard-hitting chapter, he discusses his professional disagreement with the leadership priorities demonstrated by Rom�o Dallaire in the early hours of the Rwandan genocide. He continues his story to the present, to .the first real litmus test for nato. -- Afghanistan. Divided into two parts -- pre-1993, when MacKenzie calls himself a Cold War grunt, and post-1993, after his controversial stint in Bosnia -- Soldiers Made Me Look Good is laced with anecdotes both funny and profound. It concludes with ten pointers on leadership, in which Lewis MacKenzie shares hard-earned insights from a life on the front lines.

Major-General Lewis MacKenzie (Ret’d) was born in Truro, Nova Scotia, and has served in trouble spots around the world. In 1992, he commanded the UN Protection Force that opened Sarajevo airport to allow the arrival of humanitarian aid. He published the best-selling Peacekeeper: The Road to Sarajevo after retiring from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1993; “A Soldier’s Peace,” a television documentary based on the book, won a New York Film Festival Award in 1996. His many honours include the Order of Canada and the United Nations Medal of Honour. MacKenzie is now a public affairs commentator on television and in the Globe and Mail and a sought-after lecturer on leadership and conflict resolution.

Lewis MacKenzie's profile page

.To see the peacekeeper myth ably demolished, however, one must pick up Lewis MacKenzie's own memoir, Soldiers Made Me Look Good. Loaded with anecdotes, and delivered in MacKenzie's suffer-fools-badly style, it's easily the speed-read of the bunch..

Calgary Herald

.The first half of Soldiers Made Me Look Good lives up to its name in a kind of Saturday night at the Legion fashion. MacKenzie's anecdotes of his growing up and military career puts him in the 'Peck's bad boy' category. But then qualities of deviousness and cunning served him well; whether it was a sly reading between the lines of his instructions in a military exercise -- later interpreted as initiative when it worked out in his favour -- or gambling on an assault through swampland when a more conventional approach was expected..

Winnipeg Free Press

.MacKenzie is a natural storyteller...an enjoyable read..

Chronicle Herald

.Soldiers Made Me Look Good is a book about leadership. For years [MacKenzie's] delivered talks on it and a key section of his book shows he has a very different idea about it than a certain colleague -- one Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire...The two men differ on a key point: that the priorities of mission, soldiers and self must shift once and a while..

North Shore News