This is one of the best WWII social histories I've read (and I've read a few since I am grad student studying society during WWII). It is thorough, covers a variety of topics, and is engagingly written. A must for any history buff or student of WWII.

In doing research on life in the United States and events leading to World War II, I stumbled upon this book. The details and the varied information in this book leaves me thinking that Mr. Perrett's work is a marvelous achievement. I was between 8 and 12 during World War II, and no work I have seen better covers these war years on the homefront.

No less an eminent man of letters than Mark Twain called Ulysses S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs" "the best [memoirs] of any General's than Caesars." Having now read this outstanding work along with those of Julius Caesar, William T. Sherman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Colin Powell and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, I must agree with Mark Twain's assessment. For sheer honesty, humility, and simple but powerful language, U.S. Grant's memoirs are without peer.

Grant allows the reader to go along with him and live once again his experiences during the Mexican War and American Civil War. He interjects his own judgments and opinions sparingly, yet always honestly. Where he feels he made mistakes, he admits them freely, and his criticisms of his colleagues is always tempered by an obvious attitude of professionalism. The fact that Grant wrote a memoir of such eloquence while dying from cancer makes it all the more powerful a book.

I found this modern library edition especially outstanding. The introductory notes by Caleb Carr and Geoffrey Perret, while brief, are extremely informative. Maps and etchings from the original 1885 Charles Webster & Co. edition are included, as is General Grant's report to Secretary of War Stanton on Civil War operations during 1864-65. This appendix makes fantastic reading by itself!

I highly recommend this outstanding edition to all Civil War and military history enthusiasts. It is simply the best military memoir I've ever read.

Being a Civil War buff, I just received a copy of the old 2-volume edition of this book as a birthday present. It turned out to be one of the better presents I have received. Grant begins by stating that he will NOT present all the details of each campaign and battle. He keeps this promise. Rather, the book is a general overview of his background, youth, and military career from Mexico through the Civil War. I expected some self-aggrandizement, but was (pleasantly)surprised by Grant's frankness and obvious sincerity. He tells things as he experienced them, with no flourishes. When he was wrong, he says so. When credit belongs to someone else, he also says so. It is a straight-forward story by an obviously straight-forward man. Knowing that he was soon to die, Grant wrote a remarkably honest piece - especially compared to the works of some of his contemporaries. When I finished reading the book, I don't believe that I knew that much more about the war itself. Rather, my strongest impression was of Grant's character; that I had, in a sense, met the man. It is a book NOT be to missed.

Grant's memoirs are a must-read for any serious student of the Civil War. While praise is heaped upon Confederate generals such as Lee and Jackson, Grant's legacy has always been a little more uncertain. His reputation has been associated with allegations of drunkenness, and with an apparent unflinching ability to send men to their slaughter which this book helps to dispel.

Lincoln loved Grant, as he was the first Union commander who seemed willing to fight it out with Lee's army, and who enjoyed any consistent success. When one considers Grant's predecessors at the helm of the Union army, one can understand Lincoln's enthusiasm. You had McClellan, who never read an exaggerated report of the enemy size he didn't believe; "Fighting Joe Hooker", flanked and embarrassed at Chancellorsville; Burnside, who foolishly sent wave after wave of Union soldiers across the Rappahanock to attack an impregnable stone wall at Fredericksburg; and Pope, who was soundly beaten at Manassas. Meanwhile, Grant caught Abe's attention with his successful siege of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, as Meade was beating Lee at Gettysburg.

Reading Grant's Memoirs is a fascinating experience, as the war, at least that part of it involving Grant, comes to life in the hands of a thoughtful commentator. Grant was obviously there, and he shares informative communications with his inferior officers (such as Sherman) and with the President. Grant sent many men to their doom to be sure, (the Wilderness campaign comes to mind as being especially bloody and ineffective), but overall you get the sense that Grant was respected by his men, who were happy to be marching forward and not backwards after a battle. He restored a sense of pride and accomplishment that was sorely lacking in the Union rank and file. He gave cogent reasons in his memoirs for the actions undertaken, sometimes admitting mistakes in humble fashion, and sometimes explaining why a siege would accomplish the same overall goal without unnecessary bloodshed.

My only regret is that Grant didn't live long enough to write a companion memoir about his presidency, which was clearly outside the scope of this book. Readers who have gotten this far in the Amazon review process are no doubt aware that a broke Grant, stricken with painful throat cancer, wrote out his Memoirs of the Civil War right up until the end of his life to provide financially for his family, finishing the book days before he died. We should all be grateful that he was able to preserve these pages for prosperity, they are truly a model of military memoirs that I consider an extremely rewarding reading experience. When one considers the circumstances in which Grant composed this work, the end result is nothing short of miraculous.

The way I sum up this book is that it is a hagiography of the U.S. Army in World War II. The author's prose was not scholarly, but that's not a really big problem as long as he gets his point across.

Perret offers a first-rate history of what went into the shaping of the U.S. Army in the Second World War. What was fascinating to learn was that, as late as 1940, the U.S. Army was ranked below that of Portugal. Through reading this book, the reader sees how it was through the foresight of people like George C. Marshall and other fine soldiers such as Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, Bradley, Eisenhower, and Patton, that the U.S. was able to develop, by 1944 and 1945, one of the finest armies in the history of the world.

What is also really good about this book is the insight Perret provides about the ordinary GI and the distinguished service provided by Black combat units, such as the 969th Field Artillery Battalion, the 761st Tank Battalion (which served continuously in combat longer than any other U.S. tank battalion in Europe), the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 92nd Infantry Division.

I highly recommend this book. It offers an excellent introduction to anyone who wants to know more about the U.S. Army and its role in the Second World War.

Perret's controversial for his spin, but his research is solid. The book reads like a good novel, making history come alive. Although Perret gives you plenty of front-line information, he is masterful at interweaving it with Marshall's overall plan. This book could, in fact, be subtitled "The Brilliance of George Marshall."

It's a fantastic read - highly recommended.

I enjoyed this book very much. Although long and detailed, I found its style engaging and well organized. It's an easy read. Being able to turn dense historical material into such an interesting book is a triumph.

Writing a biography of a controversial personality like MacArthur is challenging and, overall, I think Perret has done a good job. It's too easy to fall in love with your subject and the author is able to resist the temptation to hurruh too much.

I think, however, that there are a few areas, where the author seems to accept behaviors that are questionable and problematic. Into his assertion of MacArthur's greatness he never really factors in MacArthur's overly emotional temperament nor his lack of veracity. There is space for further debate here that I think the author missed.

If you want to read good history (not great) you need to pick this book up. I think you will absolutely find the book to be a good book, but I found the last chapter to be great. I love when the author chronicles the general giving his last speech at West Point. Talk about a dying man's last play on the stage! The way that the author details this speech leaves one with an exceptional feeling. MacArthur was a man dedicated to his principles and to the army. Still, I like the way he finishes that speech and turns to his wife to blow her a kiss. He could be an officer and a gentlemen even with all of his flaws. Stanley Weintraub's book, "MacArthur's War" is also a good piece of writing. I would recommend both of these books if you want to get a balanced picture of the man and his life. I think Peret is successful (as Weintraub is) in showing the contrasts and character flaws of this great man. Also, for other information on the general, check out the MacArthur center website.

General MacArthur is one of those truly fascinating historical figures, one that truly deserves study by even the casual military history student. He has been labeled an "egomaniac", a "primadonna", a "genius", etc., etc. This book attempts to blend all those summations into one biography, and does so flawlessly.

Mr. Perret's work is by far better than the other noted MacArthur biography, "American Caesar". Mr. Perret is a great deal more balanced and thoughtful in his treatment. His work is also a good deal more enjoyable to read.

The one thing that I think is noteworthy about this book as a whole is that while it does a marvelous job of chronicling MacArthur's life, it is done without casting judgment one way or the other. I noted above that MacArthur draws a wide range of emotions - from egomaniac to genius. Mr. Perret manages to corral all those different facets of MacArthur's personality and present them in such a way that the reader is allowed to see all sides equally and make his own conclusions. That, I believe, is what separates Mr. Perret's work from "American Caesar". "American Caesar" was largely biased towards MacArthur's primadonna persona, and as such, that bio fell on its face.

While Mr. Perret expertly and rightfully spends much of his work covering MacArthur's fight for the Phillipines - a place that occupied all his thoughts during WWII - he is remiss in not adequately covering Korea, specifically, the landing at Inchon. That is Mr. Perret's one shortcoming in this book. The Inchon landing was perhaps one of the greatest master strokes of modern warfare, and definitely of MacArthur's waning days in the Army, yet it is passed over without a lot of detail. I think Mr. Perret failed to detail it as it should have. I would have focused on MacArthur's strenuous campaigning to land at Inchon, which was fraught with hazards and potential catastrophe. MacArthur was the only one who could have suggested Inchon, yet was the only one who could have carried it out, much less thought it would have succeeded. Instead, in this bio, Mr. Perret basically glosses it over, much to my disappointment.

All in all though, I did enjoy this work very much. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting to read about this amazing and tragic historical giant. It is definitely the better of the MacArthur biographies.

I picked up this book because I was researching my grandfather, who was a B-17 pilot shot down over Switzerland. I looked this up in the book, and immediately found inaccurate information. The author claims that only 10 crews made it to Switzerland in March of 1944, yet when my grandfather was shot down on 18 March 15 other crews were interned by the Swiss on the same day, the highest number in the entire war. The author also claims that many of the bombers landed with little or no damage, insinuating that they were intentionally getting out of the war. This is also false- the AAF conducted an extensive investigation during the war, and found that almost every bomber that landed in Switzerland had extensive damage. I'm not sure where the information in the book came from, but it is incorrect. Any crewman interned in Swizerland could have set the record straight in that regard, and there are plenty of them around who belong to the Swiss Internees Association.

This guy does not check his facts with primary sources and has many axes to grind. He has admited in interviews that he is not really an historian, but is rather a writer with research assistants and relies mostly on secondary sources. Useful only to those who know not where else to go. Really has it in for the B-29 and Hap Arnold.

It is very difficult to reach a conclusion about the real quality ot this book. Intended to be a general picture of USAAF in WW II, it lacks appendices, a place where much of the lack of information in the book could be informed. It talks very little about the pilots, only about generals, and in some parts it is really a boring reading. On the other side, we must consider the author had only one book to show his point, and he did the best possible.