Is to take an hour and a half or so and watch his brief (it's in the CSPAN archives). It has changed a bit since the Iraq War has, er, not been as successful as hoped. And I think you may get more out of it than you would from the book, since too much of the book (IMO, Barnett defends this as necessary to set the context and give others a window on how the Pentagon works) is about the process of writing and developing ideas for the book and that tends to play a smaller role in the presentation itself. One thing he talks about is that the U.S. gov't should go joint across agencies, which it does for specific missions on an ad hoc basis, e.g. the Tsunami, saving the Kurds, etc. Another is that beyond a certain level, all generals should be "purple," e.g. joint rather than representatives of the service branch from which they came. I haven't seen any serious counterarguments as to what the downsides are, so I'll be interested to see if you come across/up with any. I've come think Barnett's self-promotion is just the excitement of a guy who is getting a taste of hard-earned success, and isn't shy about sharing it. I also think it's a reflection of what it takes to spread your ideas in a cluttered media world. At the same time, he seems generous with his time -- heck, he responded to one of my emails, which is pretty neat -- and the fact that he reviews the reviewers on his weblog is pretty fascinating.