Whatever else America’s decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have wrought, they have produced a lot of extraordinary journalism. There have been several books chronicling the life of grunts on the ground (Evan Wright’s Generation Kill) as well as the policy debates in Washington (Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco). After covering the conflict for Newsweek magazine, Michael Hastings wanted to write an in-depth profile of an American general. But he wanted to do it his way. “I wanted to write the Generation Kill of the army brass. It would be a piece that showed how the generals actually talked and argued with the politicians, and to that explained how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have actually evolved,” he says.

He got his opportunity when the editors of Rolling Stone assigned him a profile of General Stanley McChrystal, whose counterinsurgency strategy was supposed to win the war in Afghanistan. Hastings doubted the army would grant him much access to the general, so was surprised when they replied immediately and positively. The next thing he knew he was on a flight to Paris, where he met up with the general and his staff for a month-long trip through Paris, Berlin, Kabul, Kandahar and Washington, D.C.

Why did the army give a Rolling Stone reporter so much access? Hastings answers the question in The Runaway General, the Rolling Stone article that led to McChrystal's resignation. “Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict,” he writes. He needed some good press, and fast.

McChrystal had noticed the way General David Petraeus had endeared himself to the press, and used the media to bypass the chain of command and push for his policies. And why did he choose Rolling Stone? The general fancied himself as someone who, much like the magazine, “pushed the envelope,” and appealed to a younger audience. Furthermore, the fact that Hastings was a Rolling Stone reporter influenced the way the general and his staff presented themselves. “They would have acted differently if I were from, say, the New York Times. The month played out like it was one of those crazy road trips, although this time with a general rather than a band. All of them were acting the part of a bunch of guys at a wild party,” he says.

Born in upstate New York, Hastings was kicked off his high school newspaper for comparing the principal to the Star Wars character Jabba the Hutt. He was beginning his final year at NYU in September 2001, and immediately ran down to ground zero after the attack on the World Trade Center. He interned for Newsweek International that summer, and was hired by the magazine that fall. He begged to be sent overseas. In he 2005 became the magazine’s Baghdad correspondent. It was a life-changing experience, which he wrote about in his memoir, I Lost My Love In Baghdad, (2008). He left Newsweek after covering the 2008 presidential election, and began writing for GQ and Rolling Stone.

A number of big profiles of McChrystal had appeared over the years, but Hastings thought they were marred by the kind of hagiography—Four hours of sleep a night! One meal a day!—that had become common in much journalism about the military. He compares it to the soft coverage of a sports figure like Tiger Woods. “Anyone who covered Woods knew the kind of stuff he was doing. But there was a code of silence among golf writers. When you are covering a beat like that you’ve got to protect the golden goose. There is a similar phenomenon among military reporters, especially within the pentagon. It is easy to get seduced by these top-ranking military figures and special forces guys. It feels cool to be part of that club. So the journalist’s first instinct is to protect these guys and treat them uncritically,” he says.

Hastings accumulated ninety single-spaced pages of notes, and thirty hours of taped interviews during his month with McChrystal. In addition to “fly on the wall” observing, he sat down for formal interviews with each of the major characters. The casual interaction helped him formulate good questions. “I’d ask the questions and then just try to shut up. These guys had a lot to say. They had a kind of freewheeling style that spilled over into how they dealt with the press,” he says.

Hastings was in a remote part of Afghanistan when the profile appeared, and he learned that McChrystal had been recalled to Washington, most likely to be fired. He thought it would be a good idea to return to Kabul. It is sometimes difficult for journalists to find flights between military bases, but once the pilot he approached realized he was the author of the McChrystal piece, it was easy. "Hey, this ride's for you, man!" he said.

By Robert S. Boynton, Director of Literary Reportage Concentration at New York University, and author of The New New Journalism. Michael Hastings’ The Runaway General is one of Boynton's selections for The New New Journalism, circa 2011.