The General vs. the President

August 8, 2016
Brands (Reagan), professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, expounds on President Truman’s decision, in April 1951, to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then the UN commander in Korea, after months of listening to him threaten to expand the war. The issues behind this decision might take up as much as a long magazine article, so Brands adds workmanlike dual biographies and an account of the Korean War before getting down to his main business, which will refresh readers’ memories without adding any special insights. Despite MacArthur’s assurance that they wouldn’t, Chinese forces entered the war in November 1950. During the headlong retreat that followed, MacArthur uttered increasingly shrill warnings about Armageddon unless he was permitted to attack China proper. The general’s superiors never shared the public’s adoration of him, and all supported Truman’s action in relieving him. This produced widespread but short-lived outrage, and historians now agree it was the right decision. Brands does not rock any boats. His Truman is a plainspoken leader whose reputation has risen steadily since bottoming out in 1951. His MacArthur, a military genius with an inflated ego, follows a timeworn tradition. Readers may weary of long quotations from correspondence and committee hearings, but they will encounter the definitive history of a half-forgotten yet bitter controversy.

Starred review from July 15, 2016
Two American heroes tested and tried at their most inspired hours.Brands (History/Univ. of Texas; Reagan: The Life, 2015, etc.) finds in President Harry Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur two perfect counterweights to the unfurling crisis over the aggressive incursions of communism in East Asia. The author works his way backward from the tipping point in December 1950, when the Chinese had joined the Korean War against the United States and its Allies despite the assurances by MacArthur that the Chinese would never dare. The president, "livid" at the general for his recklessness and lack of foresight, assured the press that the U.S. "will take whatever steps are necessary" to repel the Chinese, including the use of "every weapon we have." This was no reassurance for the rest of the world, terrified of the opening salvos of an atomic war, which the president, immersed in domestic woes involving a Republican-controlled Congress, wanted to avoid at all costs, while the general, rejecting appeasement as the method of cowards (had the world learned nothing from Hitler?), seemed to invite World War III with his brazen attitude. In an elegant narrative, eminent historian Brands fleshes out the two characters and their paths to this moment's "knife-edge...above an abyss." Truman, somewhat appalled to be handed the job of president, warmed to the tasks of rebuilding Europe and containing communism from a sense of humanitarian duty and decency. He emerged from the bruising election, fights with Republicans, Joseph McCarthy allegations, the Berlin airlift, and alarming declarations by his rogue general with a "refusal to be discouraged." MacArthur, on the other hand, inculcated by his ingrained sense of entitlement and public accolades over the Philippines, Japan, and elsewhere, needed at this golden point in his waning career a crowning achievement: an amphibious invasion at Inchon that was so crazily brilliant that it just might work. An exciting, well-written comparison study of two American leaders at loggerheads during the Korean War crisis.

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September 15, 2016
In examining the conflict between Truman and MacArthur, history professor Brands is moving over well-traveled ground. Still, he provides a fresh look at this dispute while placing it within the context of an America in which postwar optimism had given way to growing insecurity. The economy was sluggish; the Soviets had the A-bomb, and the Chinese had entered the Korean War with a half-million troops. Truman had ruled out the nuclear option. MacArthur carried out a public campaign in which that option was a possibility, and he sought a wider war in direct defiance of his commander in chief. This was a clash of two willful, proud men, and Brands effectively portrays their characters. MacArthur was a brilliant strategist, personally brave, egotistical, and often disdainful of civilian authority. Truman was stubborn and short-tempered and a voracious reader with a deep understanding of American democracy. Brands doesn't break any new ground, but he does offer a timely reminder of the need to be wary of the man on a white horse who will rescue us from our dilemmas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2016

Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands (history, Univ. of Texas at Austin; Reagan: The Life) has perfected the art of popular biographies and is well qualified to recount the well-known conflict between Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) and Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) on whether or not to attack China during the Korean War. MacArthur, an ambitious five-star general who sought glory during World War II and the Korean War, was once considered by Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the greatest threat to American democracy. Truman unexpectedly assumed the presidency upon Roosevelt's death and would have preferred remaining in the Senate. Though MacArthur sometimes sneered at politicians, he hungered for the presidency in 1940, 1944, and 1952. In short, pointed chapters, Brands captures the dilemmas of foreign policy during the Cold War, pitting a self-effacing democratic personality against a cagey authoritarian. The author demonstrates that both Truman and the democratic process ultimately triumphed from the president's willingness to forego short-run success. VERDICT Readers interested in the Cold War, civilian-military relations, and the Korean War will appreciate this readable and balanced view of MacArthur and Truman, especially Brand's contention that MacArthur was willing to risk his firing to promote his deep-seated presidential aspirations. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/16.]--William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016

Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands here illuminates the showdown between President Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, especially fraught once China entered the Korean War. Truman slipped once, saying that the military commander in the field was in charge of all weapons use, and the thought of the high-handed MacArthur in control of the bomb was pretty unsettling. Truman's eventual triumph defined America's approach to diplomacy throughout the entire Cold War period.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2016

Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands (history, Univ. of Texas at Austin; Reagan: The Life) has perfected the art of popular biographies and is well qualified to recount the well-known conflict between Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) and Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) on whether or not to attack China during the Korean War. MacArthur, an ambitious five-star general who sought glory during World War II and the Korean War, was once considered by Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the greatest threat to American democracy. Truman unexpectedly assumed the presidency upon Roosevelt's death and would have preferred remaining in the Senate. Though MacArthur sometimes sneered at politicians, he hungered for the presidency in 1940, 1944, and 1952. In short, pointed chapters, Brands captures the dilemmas of foreign policy during the Cold War, pitting a self-effacing democratic personality against a cagey authoritarian. The author demonstrates that both Truman and the democratic process ultimately triumphed from the president's willingness to forego short-run success. VERDICT Readers interested in the Cold War, civilian-military relations, and the Korean War will appreciate this readable and balanced view of MacArthur and Truman, especially Brand's contention that MacArthur was willing to risk his firing to promote his deep-seated presidential aspirations. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/16.]--William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.