The Generals
Description
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.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Content
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: Captain William DePuy and the 90th Division in Normandy, summer 1944
PART I WORLD WAR II
1. General George C. Marshall: The leader
2. Dwight Eisenhower: How the Marshall system worked
3. George Patton: The specialist
4. Mark Clark: The man in the middle
5. "Terrible Terry" Allen: Conflict between Marshall and his protégés
6. Eisenhower manages Montgomery
7. Douglas MacArthur: The general as presidential aspirant
8. William Simpson: The Marshall system and the new model American general
PART II THE KOREAN WAR
9. William Dean and Douglas MacArthur: Two generals self- destruct
10. Army generals fail at Chosin
11. O. P. Smith succeeds at Chosin
12. Ridgway turns the war around
13. MacArthur's last stand
14. The organization man's Army
PART III THE VIETNAM WAR
15. Maxwell Taylor: Architect of defeat
16. William Westmoreland: The organization man in command
17. William DePuy: World War II- style generalship in Vietnam
18. The collapse of generalship in the 1960s
- a. At the top
- b. In the field
- c. In personnel policy
19. Tet '68: The end of Westmoreland and the turning point of the war
20. My Lai: General Koster's cover-up and General Peers's investigation
21. The end of a war, the end of an Army
PART IV INTERWAR
22. DePuy's great rebuilding
23. "How to teach judgment"
PART V
IRAQ AND THE HIDDEN COSTS OF REBUILDING
24. Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and the empty triumph of the 1991 war
25. The ground war: Schwarzkopf vs. Frederick Franks
26. The post- Gulf War military
27. Tommy R. Franks: Two- time loser
28. Ricardo Sanchez: Over his head
29. George Casey: Trying but treading water
30. David Petraeus: An outlier moves in, then leaves
EPILOGUE: Restoring American military leadership
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
