Need to Know is the coming of age story of an American writer, teacher, soldier and spy. McMaster, having started his career in foreign intel work as a Czech linguist in Bavaria finished it as the Defense Department's executive responsible for cooperative, special counter-terrorism initiatives with Great Britain's elite SAS and Commando forces, following al Qaeda attacks on American soil in 2001. He writes of his close calls in Europe, in the mid-1960s, with foreign and hostile agents "commies on commission," as he refers to them, who often worked the prostitute streets of Berlin, Bonn, or Nuremburg seeking to compromise American intelligence personnel. "There was nothing subtle," writes the author about one occurrence in a Bavarian nightclub, "about the man's cold pitch, and that surprised me." His years with DIA, CIA and Army Intelligence strengthened his facility for languages and placed him at the pinnacle of cooperative intel work with NATO partners and later with Israeli Defense Force counterparts. Returning to graduate school after ten years with U.S. Special Operations Command, having dealt daily with special ops shooters, planners, and counter-terrorist experts, McMaster became a gifted writer, poet, playwright and university professor. His is, writes Rattle editor Timothy Green, an "inexplicable journey from hunting villains to honing villanelles."