Call number
355 RIC
Collection
Publication
Penguin Press (2012), Edition: 1, 576 pages
Description
An epic history of the decline of American military leadership from World War II to Iraq.
Media reviews
Wall Street Journal
It is Mr. Ricks's contention--this is a highly contentious book--that American post-war generalship has been severely substandard not just in recent years but for much of the six decades separating Dwight Eisenhower from David Petraeus. The author writes in an engaging, informed way, but what he
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says amounts to caustic assault on American postwar military leadership. . . . If this book were to be published in jurisdictions without the First Amendment, several of today's multistar generals might bring libel actions. . . . Ultimately, Mr. Ricks's . . . [thesis] is unconvincing, though it makes for a highly entertaining book--so long as you're not a general. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member will5352
Last night I finished Ricks' excellent book The Generals. This morning I began Millett and Murrays' Military Effectiveness, Volume I. In the introduction to this work I found three noteworthy lines. The first, by Millet and Murray read, "Combat (or tactical) superiority became rationalized as a way
Now, as to the book itself, it is excellent. There are several hundred Amazon reviews attesting to this already. I will make only the following short comment: The book reinforces my long held belief that generals have become (business) managers over the last 30 plus years, gaining too many business management degrees in grad schools and too few of them really studying war.
As to the book, I have only two complaints; one with the author and one most likely with a type setter. This book, however an excellent work, lacks an adequate set of proper footnotes. You catch on, if you look, to the fact that there are notes relating to the text arranged by page number in the back. But you never know for sure what item of the book is, or is not, footnoted because it totally lacks any indication in the body of the text as to what is footnoted using the author's "personal" style. To do this properly should not have been that difficult. Second is my likely beef with an inept typesetter who on page 20 spells John "Black Jack" Pershing's name as a hyphenated "Back-jack" as the card game Blackjack would be, as opposed the proper "Black Jack." These two items aside, this is an eminently readable book and an exceptional essay on the state of the Army's current command structure.
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to make any strategy work." The next comes from a quote from Michael Howard "...the complex problem of running an army at all is liable to occupy his mind and skill so completely that it is very easy to forget what it is being run for." The third and last comes again from Millet and Murray, "The historical record suggests the opposite; instead of adapting their doctrine and approach to reality, for the most part military leaders and their organizations have attempted to make reality fit their preconceived notions until they and their forces fail or face obvious failure." Anyone having already read The Generals will recognize these comments. To a great degree they sum up The Generals. To anyone about to read The Generals, keep them in mind.Now, as to the book itself, it is excellent. There are several hundred Amazon reviews attesting to this already. I will make only the following short comment: The book reinforces my long held belief that generals have become (business) managers over the last 30 plus years, gaining too many business management degrees in grad schools and too few of them really studying war.
As to the book, I have only two complaints; one with the author and one most likely with a type setter. This book, however an excellent work, lacks an adequate set of proper footnotes. You catch on, if you look, to the fact that there are notes relating to the text arranged by page number in the back. But you never know for sure what item of the book is, or is not, footnoted because it totally lacks any indication in the body of the text as to what is footnoted using the author's "personal" style. To do this properly should not have been that difficult. Second is my likely beef with an inept typesetter who on page 20 spells John "Black Jack" Pershing's name as a hyphenated "Back-jack" as the card game Blackjack would be, as opposed the proper "Black Jack." These two items aside, this is an eminently readable book and an exceptional essay on the state of the Army's current command structure.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Shrike58
While I enjoyed this extended polemic calling for a revival of accountabiliy and enlightened professionalism in the higher reaches of the U.S. Army, I'm also going to admit that it probably didn't have quite as much impact as I thought it would. This being a function of being a regular reader of
Perhaps the single most enlightening portion of the book is that covering the period of post-Vietnam reconstruction, and how the pragmatists concerned with recreating tactical competance in the field-grade range of officer corps trumped those officers concerned with cultivating the philisophical foundations of professionalism that seem a part of generalship; thus helping to produce some of the empty military suits we've seen in the past decade.
Frankly, if Ricks had wanted to do so, he could have emphasized somewhat more that there has been a vicious circle since World War II in terms of professional education. No one commanded a corps in the U.S. Army during World War II without having attended the War College. Too many of the hot-shot battalion and regimental commanders of that war never completed their professional education, and thus failed to learn a proper respect for thoughtfulness to impart to their successors.
Though Ricks is mostly concerned about with how generals are trained to be appropriate partners for their political leaders, this also begs the question of what happens when the political leadership is unwilling to take the advice. Better generalship at the right time would have saved the U.S. much grief in Southeast Asia and the current round of U.S involvement winding down in Afghanistan and Iraq, but if you have presidents of the ilk of Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush who cannot handle the military truth, it will do you no good to have a George Marshall at your disposal.
Which gets to the final higher point that Ricks tends to gloss by (at least in the book); militaries are reflections of their societies and many of the problems of the Army after the Second World War have also been endemic to America at large. We have met the enemy and he is us is always a good maxim to keep in mind.
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the author's blog and having read a good portion of Ricks' bibliography.Perhaps the single most enlightening portion of the book is that covering the period of post-Vietnam reconstruction, and how the pragmatists concerned with recreating tactical competance in the field-grade range of officer corps trumped those officers concerned with cultivating the philisophical foundations of professionalism that seem a part of generalship; thus helping to produce some of the empty military suits we've seen in the past decade.
Frankly, if Ricks had wanted to do so, he could have emphasized somewhat more that there has been a vicious circle since World War II in terms of professional education. No one commanded a corps in the U.S. Army during World War II without having attended the War College. Too many of the hot-shot battalion and regimental commanders of that war never completed their professional education, and thus failed to learn a proper respect for thoughtfulness to impart to their successors.
Though Ricks is mostly concerned about with how generals are trained to be appropriate partners for their political leaders, this also begs the question of what happens when the political leadership is unwilling to take the advice. Better generalship at the right time would have saved the U.S. much grief in Southeast Asia and the current round of U.S involvement winding down in Afghanistan and Iraq, but if you have presidents of the ilk of Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush who cannot handle the military truth, it will do you no good to have a George Marshall at your disposal.
Which gets to the final higher point that Ricks tends to gloss by (at least in the book); militaries are reflections of their societies and many of the problems of the Army after the Second World War have also been endemic to America at large. We have met the enemy and he is us is always a good maxim to keep in mind.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Schmerguls
This is a study of generals and their doings in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and the present. He is critical of most of the generals, giving highest markds to marshall, Eisenhower, Ridgway, and Abrams. His criticismof MacArthur, Mark Clark, and William Westmoreland is devastating. He
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discusses how generals should act and think and his criticism of many seems pretty devastating. The parts of the book telling of the generals of the past is very absorbing. The lengthy disxcussion of the present day theories in regard to generals and how they should think and act is not as interesting as the historical parts of the book. There is an excellent chapter on the My Lai atrocity, and how it was seriously mishandled by the officers who knew of it.. An enlightening book. Show Less
LibraryThing member justindtapp
The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today
How important to the health of an organization is it to have the freedom and wherewithal to fire people who are not living up to the organization's standards? It is vitally important, and this book is an excellent case study.
Ricks'
Part I of the book looks at World War II, particularly at George Marshall's role in shaping the military. The "Marshall Rule" is held up as the gold standard. Marshall wanted vigorous young generals who could be team players internationally, who erred on the side of aggression, and did not hesitate to relieve commanders at lower levels who were not up to the job. Marshall also stood up to FDR on occasion--he pushed back.
Marshall got along well with Eisenhower, who held many of his views. It was not unusual for division commanders to relieve incompetent or ineffective battalion commanders in WWII, but Ricks tells many stories where failures to do so resulted in unnecessary losses. As Ricks writes elsewhere,
"Forget about Saving Private Ryan, with its fantasy of a handful of American soldiers blocking superior German forces in improvised street fighting. The real deal was that the Army General Eisenhower threw into Normandy, for better or worse, was undertrained and all too often horribly led. Almost all the pre-invasion preparation was about getting to the beach, with little taught about what to do after crossing it. Many officers knew more about how to transport troops in trucks than about how to lead them in combat. Gole notes that even data from the previous two years of fighting Germans in North Africa and Italy was largely ignored. "
After WWII, firings in the Armed Forces went from an action crucial to the health of the organization to a little-used politically-tainted decision often left to civilians to make.
Part II looks in depth at battles and strategy in Korea. MacArthur, of course, is the poster child of a bad commander. The wonder is how MacArthur could have been so lauded, when he was so narcissistic and unethical-- accepting medals he didn't earn as well as cash from foreign governments, and trying to command a war from a country away. In Korea, one sees a disparity between the Marines and the Army in terms of relieving commanders and general tactics that still exists today.
Lt. Col. Don Faith, Jr., whose regiment lost 90 percent of its force in the disaster at the Chosin Resevoir is one that is singled out as both an example of command failure and a victim of it-- his own commanders were inept. The draftee army of the 1950s suffered from micromanagement as officers could not tell who was competent with only a couple years of time to get to know soldiers. Ricks mentions the 1950s management bestseller The Organization Man which stated that companies should focus on conformity and groupthink in making decisions--this was the Army.
The Korean conflict improved only after Matthew Ridgeway, a Marshall protege, was given a command and began to relieve officers and make changes that lifted morale and improved outcomes. However, Ridgeway gets a letter from his superiors warning him that relieving too many officers would lead to a Congressional investigation. The legacy of Korea was that it was up to civilians to make changes in the military.
Part III is Vietnam. I have read a few books on both Korea and Vietnam and this one cast both conflicts into a new light. American involvement in Vietnam began in 1955 and originally included CIA and Special Forces training self-governing villages on self-defense, which Ricks writes was highly effective. Former General Maxwell Taylor, who Ricks criticizes (among other things) for his role in getting America embroiled in Vietnam in the first place, convinces the CIA to give the program to the Defense Department, and it quickly comes apart. The Marines again adopt a forward-thinking strategy of holding ground around bases and villages, and slowly expanding outward to bring more civilians under their perimeter. This is criticized and changed until post-Tet 1968 when it essentially becomes official policy and works to bring 95% of the population under protection and actually start winning the war. By that time, however, morale and discipline had so broken down that you had crimes like the My Lai Massacre, for which top commanders got barely a reprimand. In the entire war, only one top general was relieved by commanding officers.
Ricks examines the experience of Gen. William E DePuy, a WWII veteran and believer in the Marshall Rule of accountability and relieving incompetent subordinates. DePuy's firings of incapable battalion commanders came under fire from his superior, for which he expected to be relieved himself. Despite this strength of character, DePuy opposed "pacification" policies-- paying the Viet Cong to stop fighting-- that Ricks writes had worked well in Vietnam and would later become official counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan. DePuy would later reform the post-Vietnam Army that fought the 1991 Gulf War.
General Westmoreland fares only slightly better than MacArthur in Ricks' analysis. He is described as being basically illiterate, never known to have read any books, and repeatedly falling back on what he knew as a less senior commander rather than as a generalist, as he was supposed to be. The only consolation is that he was better than his predecessor, Gen. Paul Harkins, who was scarily incompetent. Eventually Gen. Abrams replaces Westmoreland, who was relieved by LBJ. Abrams adopts tactics similar to previous Marine strategies and sees success, but politically it is too late and the Army is essentially broken.
DePuy worked to reform the Army after Vietnam with an emphasis on smaller units, more commanders, and special forces. He built the Army that liberated Kuwait in 1991. But, as Ricks writes "his relentless focus on tactics and training has unfortunately proved to be a poor way to prepare the Army for Iraq in the 2000s."
If there is a weakness of the book it is that the 1980s and late 1990s are hardly mentioned, so generalship in Grenada, Somalia, and the Balkans go unexamined.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf is given mixed reviews in the book. Definitely politically inept, Schwarzkopf even negotiated a cease fire with Iraq with little civilian input or advice from his senior advisers. He gave explicit permission for Iraqi's to fly armed helicopters, which allowed them to put down Shia and Kurdish uprisings that threatened to topple Saddam Hussein, something those groups did not forgive the U.S. for allowing. The 1991 Gulf War was "a tactical success but a strategic draw."
Gen. Tommy Franks is painted as MacArthuresque in his incompetency both in Iraq and Afghanistan. From allowing Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora to writing a memoir that paints a rosy and short-sighted picture of the 2003 campaign, Ricks piles the criticism on hard. Sanchez and others also are roundly criticized. I find it hard to believe that G.W. Bush read "dozens" of books on military occupations and wars (as he claims in his memoir) yet did not see the importance of relieving commanders and his own Defense Secretary. Only one general was relieved in 2003, by the Marines, essentially for cowardice. But a battalion commander who conspired with subordinates to cover up murder received only a reprimand from Gen. Odierno. Ricks does not mention Rumsfeld's repeated attempts to resign but that failure of the Bush Administration speaks for itself.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is praised for making changes and for his focus on accountability. This jives with Gates' memoir where he discusses the generals he fired from the battlefield to the V.A. hospital system. David Petraeus is also held up as an "outlier" of exceptional performance.The Army still has yet to conduct an in-depth review of its 2003-2012 conduct in Iraq, even after all the helpful changes Petraeus implemented.
Ricks' epilogue proposes potential changes, such as teaching officers critical thinking and encouraging officers to work toward advance degrees. Some of it is pie-in-the-sky dreaming, such as probationary periods for lower-ranking officers and requiring officer candidates to first do a peaceful term in a cross-cultural situation, such as the Peace Corps.
Ricks has an admiration for the sacrifice of the military, but a journalistic intent to get to the bottom of the story-- the truth. While there is no completely definitive work on Vietnam yet written, Ricks cites several books, such as Dereliction of Duty, as important reading. If you follow his blog and articles, you know he's still following up on research of the characters he documents. I give this book 4.5 stars out of 5.
How important to the health of an organization is it to have the freedom and wherewithal to fire people who are not living up to the organization's standards? It is vitally important, and this book is an excellent case study.
Ricks'
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Fiasco, on the 2003 Iraq war, basically defined that war for me when I read it in 2005. This book, in turn, has changed my view of several other wars. You cannot read Ricks' books and not be skeptical of the plaudits for the U.S. military's competence and professionalism. We go to war with the army we have, and that is why we end up in protracted conflicts.Part I of the book looks at World War II, particularly at George Marshall's role in shaping the military. The "Marshall Rule" is held up as the gold standard. Marshall wanted vigorous young generals who could be team players internationally, who erred on the side of aggression, and did not hesitate to relieve commanders at lower levels who were not up to the job. Marshall also stood up to FDR on occasion--he pushed back.
Marshall got along well with Eisenhower, who held many of his views. It was not unusual for division commanders to relieve incompetent or ineffective battalion commanders in WWII, but Ricks tells many stories where failures to do so resulted in unnecessary losses. As Ricks writes elsewhere,
"Forget about Saving Private Ryan, with its fantasy of a handful of American soldiers blocking superior German forces in improvised street fighting. The real deal was that the Army General Eisenhower threw into Normandy, for better or worse, was undertrained and all too often horribly led. Almost all the pre-invasion preparation was about getting to the beach, with little taught about what to do after crossing it. Many officers knew more about how to transport troops in trucks than about how to lead them in combat. Gole notes that even data from the previous two years of fighting Germans in North Africa and Italy was largely ignored. "
After WWII, firings in the Armed Forces went from an action crucial to the health of the organization to a little-used politically-tainted decision often left to civilians to make.
Part II looks in depth at battles and strategy in Korea. MacArthur, of course, is the poster child of a bad commander. The wonder is how MacArthur could have been so lauded, when he was so narcissistic and unethical-- accepting medals he didn't earn as well as cash from foreign governments, and trying to command a war from a country away. In Korea, one sees a disparity between the Marines and the Army in terms of relieving commanders and general tactics that still exists today.
Lt. Col. Don Faith, Jr., whose regiment lost 90 percent of its force in the disaster at the Chosin Resevoir is one that is singled out as both an example of command failure and a victim of it-- his own commanders were inept. The draftee army of the 1950s suffered from micromanagement as officers could not tell who was competent with only a couple years of time to get to know soldiers. Ricks mentions the 1950s management bestseller The Organization Man which stated that companies should focus on conformity and groupthink in making decisions--this was the Army.
The Korean conflict improved only after Matthew Ridgeway, a Marshall protege, was given a command and began to relieve officers and make changes that lifted morale and improved outcomes. However, Ridgeway gets a letter from his superiors warning him that relieving too many officers would lead to a Congressional investigation. The legacy of Korea was that it was up to civilians to make changes in the military.
Part III is Vietnam. I have read a few books on both Korea and Vietnam and this one cast both conflicts into a new light. American involvement in Vietnam began in 1955 and originally included CIA and Special Forces training self-governing villages on self-defense, which Ricks writes was highly effective. Former General Maxwell Taylor, who Ricks criticizes (among other things) for his role in getting America embroiled in Vietnam in the first place, convinces the CIA to give the program to the Defense Department, and it quickly comes apart. The Marines again adopt a forward-thinking strategy of holding ground around bases and villages, and slowly expanding outward to bring more civilians under their perimeter. This is criticized and changed until post-Tet 1968 when it essentially becomes official policy and works to bring 95% of the population under protection and actually start winning the war. By that time, however, morale and discipline had so broken down that you had crimes like the My Lai Massacre, for which top commanders got barely a reprimand. In the entire war, only one top general was relieved by commanding officers.
Ricks examines the experience of Gen. William E DePuy, a WWII veteran and believer in the Marshall Rule of accountability and relieving incompetent subordinates. DePuy's firings of incapable battalion commanders came under fire from his superior, for which he expected to be relieved himself. Despite this strength of character, DePuy opposed "pacification" policies-- paying the Viet Cong to stop fighting-- that Ricks writes had worked well in Vietnam and would later become official counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan. DePuy would later reform the post-Vietnam Army that fought the 1991 Gulf War.
General Westmoreland fares only slightly better than MacArthur in Ricks' analysis. He is described as being basically illiterate, never known to have read any books, and repeatedly falling back on what he knew as a less senior commander rather than as a generalist, as he was supposed to be. The only consolation is that he was better than his predecessor, Gen. Paul Harkins, who was scarily incompetent. Eventually Gen. Abrams replaces Westmoreland, who was relieved by LBJ. Abrams adopts tactics similar to previous Marine strategies and sees success, but politically it is too late and the Army is essentially broken.
DePuy worked to reform the Army after Vietnam with an emphasis on smaller units, more commanders, and special forces. He built the Army that liberated Kuwait in 1991. But, as Ricks writes "his relentless focus on tactics and training has unfortunately proved to be a poor way to prepare the Army for Iraq in the 2000s."
If there is a weakness of the book it is that the 1980s and late 1990s are hardly mentioned, so generalship in Grenada, Somalia, and the Balkans go unexamined.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf is given mixed reviews in the book. Definitely politically inept, Schwarzkopf even negotiated a cease fire with Iraq with little civilian input or advice from his senior advisers. He gave explicit permission for Iraqi's to fly armed helicopters, which allowed them to put down Shia and Kurdish uprisings that threatened to topple Saddam Hussein, something those groups did not forgive the U.S. for allowing. The 1991 Gulf War was "a tactical success but a strategic draw."
Gen. Tommy Franks is painted as MacArthuresque in his incompetency both in Iraq and Afghanistan. From allowing Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora to writing a memoir that paints a rosy and short-sighted picture of the 2003 campaign, Ricks piles the criticism on hard. Sanchez and others also are roundly criticized. I find it hard to believe that G.W. Bush read "dozens" of books on military occupations and wars (as he claims in his memoir) yet did not see the importance of relieving commanders and his own Defense Secretary. Only one general was relieved in 2003, by the Marines, essentially for cowardice. But a battalion commander who conspired with subordinates to cover up murder received only a reprimand from Gen. Odierno. Ricks does not mention Rumsfeld's repeated attempts to resign but that failure of the Bush Administration speaks for itself.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is praised for making changes and for his focus on accountability. This jives with Gates' memoir where he discusses the generals he fired from the battlefield to the V.A. hospital system. David Petraeus is also held up as an "outlier" of exceptional performance.The Army still has yet to conduct an in-depth review of its 2003-2012 conduct in Iraq, even after all the helpful changes Petraeus implemented.
Ricks' epilogue proposes potential changes, such as teaching officers critical thinking and encouraging officers to work toward advance degrees. Some of it is pie-in-the-sky dreaming, such as probationary periods for lower-ranking officers and requiring officer candidates to first do a peaceful term in a cross-cultural situation, such as the Peace Corps.
Ricks has an admiration for the sacrifice of the military, but a journalistic intent to get to the bottom of the story-- the truth. While there is no completely definitive work on Vietnam yet written, Ricks cites several books, such as Dereliction of Duty, as important reading. If you follow his blog and articles, you know he's still following up on research of the characters he documents. I give this book 4.5 stars out of 5.
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LibraryThing member buffalogr
This is not a book about military generals, it's a book about US Army generals, operational ones...mostly of the three and four star variety. He pans some, writes accolades about some. Generally, Ricks's not enamored with the state of the US Army's leadership since Marshall. His primary thrust is
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that more of them should be fired for bad performance. Though it must be painful to read for some of these guys, it's a good explanation of the giant US Army bureaucracy today. Show Less
LibraryThing member marshapetry
Excellent book, extremely interesting. Audiobook narrator was excellent. This is not actually a war story - it's a review and comparison of military generals (generalists) in the recent wars of the1900s The only kind of disappointing aspect of the book, and somewhat obvious - a "slant" if you will
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- is that the author seems to really REALLY like General Marshal and his military tactics. No other general measures up! So I guess it's a book about how great Marshall was and how no other general will be as good as he was. On well, I loved this book and I think anyone who loves war books will too. Recommend Show Less
LibraryThing member marshapetry
Excellent book, extremely interesting. Audiobook narrator was excellent. This is not actually a war story - it's a review and comparison of military generals (generalists) in the recent wars of the1900s The only kind of disappointing aspect of the book, and somewhat obvious - a "slant" if you will
Show More
- is that the author seems to really REALLY like General Marshal and his military tactics. No other general measures up! So I guess it's a book about how great Marshall was and how no other general will be as good as he was. On well, I loved this book and I think anyone who loves war books will too. Recommend Show Less
LibraryThing member publiusdb
If there's one book that I find myself recommending more than most lately, it's Thomas Ricks' survey and analysis of US generals from World War II to the present. With an eye to examining why history has been so kind to the men who led the US Army during that war, but less so to those who followed,
The Generals is 450 pages long and divided into five sections examining World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Interwar Era, and the recent wars in the Middle East (Gulf I and II and Afghanistan). Within each, Ricks further organizes around the generals of the era, starting with General George Marshall, the unsung father of the modern US Army (and something of the Platonic ideal general, to hear Ricks conception). Marshall is both willing to relieve generals who are flawed, underperform, or just straight-up can't cut it, but is something of a savvy manager of these generals, moving them to other posts out of the way of the action rather than drumming them out of the service.
To demonstrate this, Ricks' runs through a series of the biggest names in US military history, using them to demonstrate his point. Here you find MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton, as well as less popular names like Mark Clark and Terry de la Mesa Allen. The effect is that The Generals reads a bit like an overview , and with as many events and personalities as Ricks is covering, I suppose that's the most that can expected. At times, his evidence comes off more conclusive than evidentiary, and the level of detail increases the closer Ricks' narrative comes to the present with the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan War. As such, the book is probably better as an examination of leadership, especially for the lay reader, than as an in-depth contribution to the academic examination of history (though Ricks certainly takes time to recognize, mention, and even argue with others in the field that have intersected with his work).
For me, one of those lay readers more in the 'history buff' category than the academic, it's a fun and thought provoking read. It challenges our concepts about what drives change and success, with lessons for organizations beyond the scope of Ricks' subjects. Ricks grasps the nuances of his subject, if not always the depth of knowledge that a master of the field might display, and knows how to highlight points that matter without becoming distracted by minutia or allowing his argument to become weighed down by the mass of history he is examining.
In spite of its 450 pages, The Generals is a fast read, which is a tribute to Ricks' ability to tell the story and it's worth the time to read for anyone interested in the period, the US military, or American history.
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The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today is as much a book about leadership and organizational behavior as it is about the commanders of the US military during war time. Ricks sets out to examine the gap between performance and accountability among the upper echelons of the US Army, and answer the question about why it has grown in the seven decades since World War II. The Generals is 450 pages long and divided into five sections examining World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Interwar Era, and the recent wars in the Middle East (Gulf I and II and Afghanistan). Within each, Ricks further organizes around the generals of the era, starting with General George Marshall, the unsung father of the modern US Army (and something of the Platonic ideal general, to hear Ricks conception). Marshall is both willing to relieve generals who are flawed, underperform, or just straight-up can't cut it, but is something of a savvy manager of these generals, moving them to other posts out of the way of the action rather than drumming them out of the service.
To demonstrate this, Ricks' runs through a series of the biggest names in US military history, using them to demonstrate his point. Here you find MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton, as well as less popular names like Mark Clark and Terry de la Mesa Allen. The effect is that The Generals reads a bit like an overview , and with as many events and personalities as Ricks is covering, I suppose that's the most that can expected. At times, his evidence comes off more conclusive than evidentiary, and the level of detail increases the closer Ricks' narrative comes to the present with the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan War. As such, the book is probably better as an examination of leadership, especially for the lay reader, than as an in-depth contribution to the academic examination of history (though Ricks certainly takes time to recognize, mention, and even argue with others in the field that have intersected with his work).
For me, one of those lay readers more in the 'history buff' category than the academic, it's a fun and thought provoking read. It challenges our concepts about what drives change and success, with lessons for organizations beyond the scope of Ricks' subjects. Ricks grasps the nuances of his subject, if not always the depth of knowledge that a master of the field might display, and knows how to highlight points that matter without becoming distracted by minutia or allowing his argument to become weighed down by the mass of history he is examining.
In spite of its 450 pages, The Generals is a fast read, which is a tribute to Ricks' ability to tell the story and it's worth the time to read for anyone interested in the period, the US military, or American history.
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Pages
576
ISBN
1594204047 / 9781594204043
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