Why Jean Larteguy's The Centurions appeals to our generation's most influential military strategist.

A copy of Jean Larteguy's The Centurions, an out-of-print French novel about paratroopers in Indochina and Algeria, can go for more than $1,700 on Amazon. That's reason enough for its republication this January by Amereon LTD for a list price of $59.95. But when I called the publisher, Jed Clauss, it turned out money wasn't his primary motivation: "Look, I'm an old guy," he said, "I'm at the end of my publishing career. I now only do fun projects. But David Petraeus wanted this republished. So I'm doing it."

That's General David Petraeus, the man credited with turning around the war in Iraq. I'd read a translation of the 1960 novel, which has cult status among military personnel, not too long ago—and liked it. But after talking to Clauss I began to wonder: What is it about The Centurions that makes it so wildly expensive, and what makes it appeal to our generation's most influential military strategist?

Since my husband served under Petraeus in Iraq, I was able to suss out his e-mail address and put the question to him directly. In response, he asked me to pass on a "well done" to my husband, and then added, confusingly, "Great to hear this. Best from Kabul—Dave Petraeus." Did he intentionally ignore the question? Or, more likely, did he read too quickly and think I was merely passing on the news that The Centurions was being republished? Either way, I was tickled by the "Dave."

"Dave" hadn't given me much to go on, so I began looking for answers of my own. And as I re-read this dense historical novel, its relevance became pretty clear. The novel follows Lt. Col. Pierre Raspeguy, who must transform a military unit accustomed to conventional warfare into one that can handle the more complex, dynamic challenge of defeating an insurgency. The centurions of the title refer to Raspeguy's band of French soldiers, but the term harkens back to the Roman officers who fought at the periphery while the Empire crumbled internally, paralyzed by intense political infighting. Sound familiar yet?

Like the real-life Gen. Marcel Bigeard on whom he is clearly based, Raspeguy serves time in a prison camp in Indochina, where he and his soldiers have "their individuality steeped in a bath of quicklime" until all that remains are "the bare essentials." During this "steeping" process, Raspeguy and his men make a study of their enemy, the Viet Minh. They recognize that the Viet Minh doesn't play by the conventional rules of war, and motivates followers using ideology and dogma. It is as much a political force as a military one, and defeating this enemy will require a new mindset, new leadership, and new tactics. "For our sort of war," Raspeguy muses, "you need shrewd, cunning men who are capable of fighting far from the herd, who are full of initiative too ... who can turn their hand to any trade, poachers and missionaries. "

After an uneasy return to France, Raspeguy and company are sent to Algeria. While the rest of the French military flounders—cordoned off in high-security garrisons, worrying about regulations and the opinions of higher-ups—Raspeguy and his followers realize they must "...cut [the rebels] off from the population which provides them with information and feeds them. Only then will we be able to fight them on equal terms."

The chapters set in Algeria closely parallel Petraeus' experiences in Iraq. In 2005, as it became patently obvious that we were losing the war, Petraeus advocated a new approach—one of counter-insurgency or COIN, which differs from conventional war doctrine in that it emphasizes the essentially political (as opposed to military) character of insurrection. Then, in 2006, he oversaw the writing of Field Manual 3-24, the first update of U.S. military counterinsurgency doctrine in 20 years, and the only Army field manual ever to be reviewed in the New York Times. FM 3-24 established Petraeus as a "scholar-general," and shifted our military's priorities from brief displays of massive firepower to patience and adaptability, advocating, in particular, the quick incorporation of lessons from the field. Raspeguy would cheer.