The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today

[Audiobook CD Library Edition in vinyl case.] From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fiasco and The Gamble comes an epic history of the decline of American military leadership from World War II to Iraq. History has been kinder to the American generals of World War II -- Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley -- than to the generals of the wars that followed. Is this merely nostalgia? In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks answers the question definitively: No, it is not -- in no small part because of a widening gulf between performance and accountability. During the Second World War, scores of American generals were relieved of command simply for not being good enough. Today as one American colonel said bitterly during the Iraq War, ''As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.