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MacArthur’s War: The Flawed Genius Who Challenged the American Political System

by Bevin Alexander (Berkley Hardcover, 2013).

Alexander once again demonstrates his superb mastery of the historian’s craft as he tackles head-on American history’s most famous and controversial incident of civil-military conflict – the 1951 clash between the feisty U.S. President Harry Truman and the nation’s most revered military hero, General Douglas MacArthur. The book is at once a compelling account of the Truman-MacArthur confrontation and an outstanding history of America’s unfairly “forgotten war” in Korea.

 

The Fighting Pattons

 by Brian M. Sobel (Indiana University Press, 2013).

 Sobel’s updated version of his acclaimed history of a remarkable military family focuses on the legendary World War II battlefield genius General George S. Patton Jr. (1885-1945) and his son, Major General George Smith Patton (1923- 2004), who forged his own distinguished military career in the Korean and Vietnam wars. When the book was first published in 1997, renowned historian and Patton scholar Martin Blumenson hailed it as “strong, stirring and inspiring … a stunning account.” This latest version includes a new foreword by Joanne Holbrook Patton, wife of the younger Patton.

 

Taps on the Walls: Poems From the Hanoi Hilton

by retired USAF Major General John Borling (Master Wings Publishing, 2013).

During the six years and eight months Borling spent as a prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” he survived by composing and memorizing poems, which he shared with the other captives by painstakingly tapping them out in code on the wall of his cell. This outstanding account of courage and sacrifice, which includes a foreword by fellow POW Senator John McCain, is the inaugural publication of Master Wings Publishing, an imprint of the Pritzker Military Library (pritzkermilitarylibrary.org).

 

Originally published in the May 2013 issue of Armchair General.