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.
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 Policy magazine, for which he writes the prizewinning blog The Best Defense. Ricks covered the U.S. military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008. Until the end of 1999 he had the same beat at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. 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 Gamble, and the number one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, Churchill and Orwell, is a New York Times bestseller.
Show moreAn 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.
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 Policy magazine, for which he writes the prizewinning blog The Best Defense. Ricks covered the U.S. military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008. Until the end of 1999 he had the same beat at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. 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 Gamble, and the number one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, Churchill and Orwell, is a New York Times bestseller.
Show moreThomas 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 ofForeign 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, includingThe Generals,The Gamble, and the number oneNew York TimesbestsellerFiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His newest book,Churchill and Orwell- The Fight For Freedom, is aNew York Timesbestseller.
"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
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