The Generals
American Military Command from World War II to Today
Published on 29. October 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
592 pages
978-0-14-312409-2 (ISBN)
Description
A New York Times bestseller!
An epic history of the decline of American military leadership-from the bestselling author of Fiasco and Churchill and Orwell.
While history has been kind to the American generals of World War II-Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley-it has been less kind to the generals of the wars that followed, such as Koster, Franks, Sanchez, and Petraeus. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In chronicling the widening gulf between performance and accountability among the top brass of the U.S. military, Ricks tells the stories of great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and generals who failed themselves and their soldiers. In Ricks's hands, this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails.
An epic history of the decline of American military leadership-from the bestselling author of Fiasco and Churchill and Orwell.
While history has been kind to the American generals of World War II-Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley-it has been less kind to the generals of the wars that followed, such as Koster, Franks, Sanchez, and Petraeus. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In chronicling the widening gulf between performance and accountability among the top brass of the U.S. military, Ricks tells the stories of great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and generals who failed themselves and their soldiers. In Ricks's hands, this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails.
Reviews / Votes
"Engaging, informed . . . a highly entertaining book." -The Wall Street Journal"A masterful and critical study of the art of generalship from World War II through Iraq and Afghanistan by one of the smartest military experts out there." -The New York Times
"[An important and timely book . . . trenchant, straightforward." -The Washington Post
"Impressive . . . Stark, fact-based, and strongly argued." -Chicago Tribune
"Ricks shines, blending an impressive level of research with expert storytelling." -The Weekly Standard
"[A] savvy study of leadership. Combining lucid historical analysis, acid-etched portraits of generals from 'troublesome blowhard' Douglas MacArthur to 'two-time loser' Tommy Franks, and shrewd postmortems of military failures and pointless slaughters such as My Lai, the author demonstrates how everything from strategic doctrine to personnel policies create a mediocre, rigid, morally derelict army leadership... Ricks presents an incisive, hard-hitting corrective to unthinking veneration of American military prowess." -Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
"Informed readers, especially military buffs, will appreciate this provocative, blistering critique of a system where accountability appears to have gone missing - like the author's 2006 bestseller, Fiasco, this book is bound to cause heartburn in the Pentagon." -Kirkus
"Entertaining, provocative and important." -The Wilson Quarterly
"This is a brilliant book-deeply researched, very well-written and outspoken. Ricks pulls no punches in naming names as he cites serious failures of leadership, even as we were winning World War II, and failures that led to serious problems in later wars. And he calls for rethinking the concept of generalship in the Army of the future." -William J. Perry, 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense
"Thomas E. Ricks has written a definitive and comprehensive story of American generalship from the battlefields of World War II to the recent war in Iraq. The Generals candidly reveals their triumphs and failures, and offers a prognosis of what can be done to ensure success by our future leaders in the volatile world of the twenty-first century." -Carlo D'Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War
"Tom Ricks has written another provocative and superbly researched book that addresses a critical issue, generalship. After each period of conflict in our history, the quality and performance of our senior military leaders comes under serious scrutiny. The Generals will be a definitive and controversial work that will spark the debate, once again, regarding how we make and choose our top military leaders." -Anthony C. Zinni, General USMC (Ret.)
"The Generals is insightful, well written and thought-provoking. Using General George C. Marshall as the gold standard, it is replete with examples of good and bad generalship in the postwar years. Too often a bureaucratic culture in those years failed to connect performance with consequences. This gave rise to many mediocre and poor senior leaders. Seldom have any of them ever been held accountable for their failures. This book justifiably calls for a return to the strict, demanding and successful Marshall prescription for generalship. It is a reminder that the lives of soldiers are more important than the careers of officers-and that winning wars is more important than either." -Bernard E. Trainor, Lt. Gen. USMC (Ret.); author of The Generals' War
"The Generals rips up the definition of professionalism in which the US Army has clothed itself. Tom Ricks shows that it has lost the habit of sacking those who cannot meet the challenge of war, leaving it to Presidents to do so. His devastating analysis explains much that is wrong in US civil-military relations. America's allies, who have looked to emulate too slavishly the world's pre-eminent military power, should also take heed." -Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York, NY
United States
Publishing group
Penguin Putnam Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
485 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-14-312409-2 (9780143124092)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2012
Penguin Books
€8.99
Available for download
Person
Thomas E. Ricks is an adviser on national security at the New America Foundation, where he participates in its "Future of War" project. He was previously a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and is a contributing editor of Foreign Policymagazine, for which he writes the prizewinning blog The Best Defense. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, he covered U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is the author of several books, including The Generals, The Gamble, and the number one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His newest book, Churchill and Orwell: The Fight For Freedom, is a New York Times bestseller.