Douglas MacArthur was once arguably the final American public determine to be worshipped unreservedly as a countrywide hero, the final army determine to conjure up the romantic stirrings as soon as evoked via George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee. yet he used to be additionally one in all America’s so much divisive figures, a guy whose whole profession was once steeped in controversy. was once he an avatar or an anachronism, a super strategist or a vainglorious mountebank? Drawing on a wealth of latest assets, Arthur Herman can provide a powerhouse biography that peels again the layers of myth—both sturdy and bad—and exposes the marrow of the fellow beneath.

MacArthur’s existence spans the emergence of the U.S. military as an international struggling with strength. Its heritage is to a good measure his tale. The son of a Civil warfare hero, he led American troops in 3 enormous conflicts—World struggle I, global conflict II, and the Korean battle. Born 4 years after Little Bighorn, he died simply as American forces started deploying in Vietnam. Herman’s magisterial ebook spans the total arc of MacArthur’s trip, from his elevation to significant normal at thirty-eight via his tenure as superintendent of West element, box marshal of the Philippines, preferrred ruler of postwar Japan, and past. greater than any earlier biographer, Herman indicates how MacArthur’s strategic imaginative and prescient assisted in shaping a number of many years of U.S. international coverage. on my own between his friends, he foresaw the shift clear of Europe, turning into the prophet of America’s future within the Pacific Rim.

right here, too, is a shiny portrait of a guy whose grandiose imaginative and prescient of his personal future received him enemies in addition to acolytes. MacArthur was once one of many first army heroes to domesticate his personal public persona—the swashbuckling commander equipped with Ray-Ban sun shades, driving crop, and corncob pipe. again and again spared from being killed in battle—his squaddies nicknamed him “Bullet Proof”—he had a robust experience of divine undertaking. “Mac” used to be a guy possessed, within the phrases of 1 of his contemporaries, of a “supreme and nearly mystical religion that he couldn't fail.” but whilst he did, it used to be on an epic scale. His willingness to defy either civilian and armed forces authority was once, Herman exhibits, a lifelong trait—and it should turn into his undoing. Tellingly, MacArthur as soon as saw, “Sometimes it's the order one disobeys that makes one famous.”

To trap the lifetime of such an outsize determine in a single quantity is not any small success. With Douglas MacArthur, Arthur Herman has set a brand new typical for untangling the legacy of this American legend.

Praise for Douglas MacArthur

“This is revisionist heritage at its most sensible and, optimistically, will reopen a debate in regards to the judgment of heritage and MacArthur’s position in history.”—New York magazine of Books

“Unfailingly evocative . . . with reference to an epic . . . greater than a biography, it's a story of a time some time past nearly very unlikely to consider this day as having taken position, with MacArthur himself as a determine might be too distant to appreciate, yet the entire extra very important to encounter.”—The New Criterion

“With Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior, the prolific and proficient historian Arthur Herman has introduced an expertly rendered, compulsively readable account that does complete justice to MacArthur’s huge achievements with no slighting his both huge flaws.”—Commentary

From the Hardcover edition.