Book Review: Travels with Harley - Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Paul S. Gendrolis, U.S. Army - retired
Author: Christopher Holshek, Colonel, U.S. Army Reserve - Retired
Publication Information:
February 2016, Inkshares, $16.95
ISBN-10: 1941758371 | ISBN-13: 978-1941758373
275 pages including 13 pages of annotated end-notes
Available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and inkshares.com
Reviewer: Lieutenant Colonel Paul S. Gendrolis, U.S. Army - retired

“Professionalism, discipline, humility.” When I asked Colonel Holshek what advice he would give a new FAO upon his/her first overseas FAO assignment, he provided these three watchwords. More than mere words, they are keys to success in most walks of life. In Travels with Harley he recounts their importance while serving as a United Nations military and civilian observer and dealing with the challenges of overseas peace-making and peace-keeping operations.
Colonel Holshek has written a very readable and illuminating book about his 30-year civil-military career. Had I not known that he was a Civil Affairs officer, I might have been convinced he was a FAO. His education, qualifications, and assignments read like those of any FAO. He was commissioned through the ROTC program at the New Mexico Military Institute in May 1980, earned BA degrees in German and History, as well as International Affairs from George Washington University, and served with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany -- a great start for a prospective FAO career.
While assigned to the 2nd ACR, he was given the opportunity to excel as the RS-5, public affairs and civil-military affairs officer. It was a serendipitous move that set in motion his future military and civilian career, which included serving in a UN Mission in Liberia, in the Balkans (Bosnia and Croatia), and as the Commander of the 402nd Civil Affairs Battalion in Iraq. Along the way he earned an MA in International Relations from Boston University and an MA in Strategic Studies at the U.S. Army War College.
Travels with Harley is the story of his 8,000-mile trip on his Harley-Davidson Dyna Wide Glide through the U.S. to commemorate his military retirement in May 2010. It recounts his reunions with family and friends along the way and with the many great Americans he met on the road. It also gave him time to reflect upon what he had seen and done over the previous 30 years. The book is part travelogue, part autobiography, part history, part civil-military affairs overview, and part a look at America and Americans. It is sprinkled with personal and professional anecdotes about senior officers with whom he served and with examples of where civil-military activities proved invaluable to war-fighting and peace-keeping operations. He paints vivid pictures of the America he experienced and provides a general outlook on the Americans he met throughout the trip.
While reading the book I was struck by the many similarities between the Civil Affairs and FAO career fields. Both are primarily non-kinetic and require language training and deep knowledge of foreign countries’ customs, traditions, and religions. And most importantly, both FAOs and CAOs can measure their degree of success by the trust and confidence they gain with their host-nation counterparts and superiors. One of the major themes of the book is that the best, most lasting, and greatest gains are made by establishing close, personal relationships with people. This humanistic approach is a commonality shared by both FAOs and CAOs.
The strength of this book is in Colonel Holshek’s honesty and ability to cover such a broad range of topics with clarity and passion. It is evident that he enjoyed his career and is keen to impart the knowledge he has gained to a new generation (and to us old-timers as well). New and old FAOs alike will find Travels with Harley well worth the read, at times humorous, familiar, and prescient. I highly recommend this book to the FAO community.