SAC BRAT

Raised near the highest levels of America's nuclear command, Don Evans developed an unusual perspective on leadership, risk, economics, markets, and war. Those ideas later guided his career on Wall Street. In the mid-1990s, his commodity trading advisor hedge fund was ranked by Managed Account Reports as the largest US manager of stock-index futures. Growing up on a Strategic Air Command base taught Don Evans a lasting lesson: adversity can become a source of strength. He calls this process overcompensation the human instinct to confront weakness, adapt, and emerge stronger. In SAC BRAT, Evans traces that force through history, from the rise of Europe in the fifteenth century and the Industrial Revolution to the American Century, the Cold War, China's ascent, and America's approaching debt crisis. He argues that the same pattern shapes nations, markets, sports teams, families, and individuals: success often begins when pressure forces people to overcome what once held them back. At the center of the story is Evans's father, Colonel Richard Evans, a World War II combat pilot and pioneering Strategic Air Command officer. He flew fifty-five combat missions over Germany and one over Japan, set a thirty-five-hour aerial-refueling record in the B-47 jet bomber, and became the first military officer to fly the Mach 2 B-58 supersonic bomber. Part memoir, part military history, and part economic warning, SAC BRAT may change the way you think about power, prosperity, conflict, and the forces that determine which people and nations rise.