Jackson: The Iron-Willed Commander (The Generals Series) by Paul Vickery

A Nifty Little Biography

Published by Thomas Nelson in 2012.

Jackson: The Iron-Willed Commander is a welcome addition to a larger series called The Generals that offers relatively short biographies (about 200 pages) of America's better-known generals. This book is by no means the definitive biography of Andrew Jackson, but it is great introduction to this controversial man.

Andrew Jackson lived most of his life on the American frontier. His most famous battle was, of course, the Battle of New Orleans in the last moments of the War of 1812 (technically, it took place after the treaty was signed) but by that time Jackson was a veteran of many battles. He had already fought the British in two wars, skirmished with the Spanish several times and was involved in multiple frontier wars with Native Americans. Throw in Jackson's willingness to duel and one quickly realizes that Jackson thrived on action and danger. A great deal of his life seems to be consumed by organizing for a campaign, going out on a military campaign, recovering from injury sustained in a battle or a duel or recovering from an illness he contracted while on a campaign. His wife, Rachel, must have been a very patient woman.

Rather than go into the details of Jackson's life, I will comment on the presentation of Jackson's more controversial decisions in the book. Jackson is reviled in many Native American communities for his policy of  forcing Native Americans out of their traditional land and making them settle across the Mississippi, including villages and communities that sided with him during the wars and including groups that decided to live like white society. Vickery is to be commended for doing what so many biographers would not do - he explains why Jackson did this. Many writers would scold Jackson, but Vickery explains Jackson's reasoning without excusing him. It makes for a better biography if one can understand the thinking of the time.

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)

Since it is a part of a series about generals, most of the book focuses on Jackson's long and varied military career. Jackson's presidency merits a few pages as does his personal life. This is a nifty little biography and I recommend it as a great place to start a study of Andrew Jackson or the frontier times of the South.

I received this book as a part of Thomas Nelson's Booksneeze program in exchange for an honest review.

Reviewed on July 24, 2012.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Jackson: The Iron-Willed Commander

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Pershing: Commander of the Great War by John Perry

An interesting, well-written biography

Published: 2011 by Thomas Nelson

I've read several of the biographies in Thomas Nelson's "The Generals" series and found Pershing: Commander of the Great War to be the best of the bunch so far. The book is well-written, flows nicely and really gives the reader a feel for the bristly personality of "Black Jack" Pershing.

Perry introduces us to Pershing, a man who wanted to be a teacher, maybe a lawyer,  but accepted an appointment to West Point because he could not afford to pay for school himself. Pershing was not particularly interesting in being a soldier, but found that the lifestyle suited him. Pershing's early service in Cuba during the Spanish-American War taught him plenty of lessons about the need for proper supply lines that he took with when he commanded the American army in Europe in World War I.

World War I General 
John J. "Black Jack" Pershing

Pershing also served as an observer in the Russo-Japanese War, the Philippines and, of course, was in charge of the expedition that fruitlessly chased Pancho Villa in Mexico. For his time, Pershing was surprisingly open to different cultures, which probably explains his willingness to lead all black units in the segregated army (and is the source of his nickname "Black Jack"). But, he is most famous for commanding the American forces in World War I. Perry covers all of these events well and keeps it interesting. Perry is especially good at discussing Pershing's personal life and the tragic fire that took most of his family.

 I received this book from the publisher, Thomas Nelson, in an exchange for an honest review.

I rate this biography 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Pershing: Commander of the Great War.

Reviewed on December 4, 2011.

Sherman: The Ruthless Victor by Agostino Von Hassell and Ed Breslin

A troubling biography.

Published in 2011.

Thomas Nelson Publishers has stepped out and published an attractive series of short biographies of American generals - all nicely bound and immensely readable. But, I found Sherman: The Ruthless Victor to be more than a little troubling for what really amounts to just a few sentences in a 163 page book.

Clearly von Hassell and Breslin are not writing this biography as fans of Sherman - they dislike the man as a person and do not respect his accomplishments on the battlefield. That is fine. I can live with a negative biography of an historical figure, but this book has moments that stretch the limits of responsible biography. For example, on page 22 the authors note that Sherman's difficult childhood may have caused strains in his relationships with his wife and his children. Reasonable assumption. But, then they go on to say that his "revulsion from scenes of domestic happiness" caused him to be particularly rough on the South during the Civil War. Why? "The South, unfortunately, presented such scenes in abundance. This prevalent and blissful state of domesticity seems to have ignited in Sherman a gratuitous pyromania, justified within himself as an exigency of war."

Really? The man went insane and burned the South because it was home to lots of happy families?

Sherman near Atlanta in 1864

This is scholarship at its worst - psychoanalysis of a patient 135 years in the past. It calls into question much of the rest of their analysis of Sherman's thoughts and motives. Later in the book they acknowledge that Sherman's use of slash and burn warfare against civilian populations was probably adapted from the Seminole War that he participated in right after he left West Point, not due to pyromania inspired by hatred of familial bliss. But, the damage to his reputation was already done. His style of warfare is a perfectly debatable topic - in fact it was so brutal that it should be discussed, but they set it up so poorly that there cannot be any debate - Sherman did it because he was crazy. End of discussion.

Another problem - on page 81 the authors were discussing pre-Bull Run conditions in D.C. in 1861 and how impatient the men were to fight. They write: "...they were ready to return home and that if an attack was not launched soon, they would simply defect." I looked up defect in several online dictionaries to see if it meant more than what I thought it meant and, like I thought, all indicated that defecting was leaving one side for its opposition (leaving the Democrats to join the Republicans or leaving the old USSR for the USA). Can you imagine that tens of thousands of Union volunteers wanted to fight so badly that they would join the Confederates just for the chance to fight? That is a serious error due to a simple incorrect word choice - I assume they meant to use "desert" rather than defect.

Like I noted, this is not a bad biography except for a few words here and there amounting to less than a paragraph, really. They should have been caught in the editing process but they were not. Too bad - there was a lot of good information here but those few words change the tone and quality of the text so much that I cannot recommend this biography.

I received this copy of the book from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of the BookSneeze program in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Sherman: The Ruthless Victor.

Reviewed on October 20, 2011.

Lee: A Life of Virtue (The Generals series) by John Perry

A solid biography in many aspects, but not without its problems

Published in 2010 by Thomas Nelson Inc.

First, a bit about this reviewer and Civil War books. This is my 80th Civil War book. Robert E. Lee figures prominently in almost every one of them. I consider him to be the the most talented general that served on either side in that war and that is high praise indeed because many generals rose to the top and did distinguished themselves in that war. If Lee is the most talented general in that war, he is the most talented American officer of the 19th century and one can make the argument that he may have been the best ever (assuming one overlooks the massive point that he earned that reputation as a fighter by breaking his oath and taking up arms against the United States government, which I am.)

No one did so much with so little against an opponent that was better fed, had better and more numerous weapons, and outnumbered him in literally every battle. He fought with principle and with respect for his enemies (who he refused to call his enemies - he called the Union forces "those people.")

All of that being said, even I cannot approach the standard of hero worship that John Perry creates in the introduction of this book. Perry cites as one of his primary sources the Douglas Southall Freeman biography R. E. Lee.  Freeman was the primary advocate of a revisionist movement of historians popularly called the Lost Cause movement. It emphasizes the noble character of the southern generals, de-emphasizes the importance of slavery as a cause of the Civil War and justifies secession as a legitimate response to aggressive Northern attacks on the Southern way of life and economy. I would consider Lee: A Life of Virtue to be Lost Cause "lite".

For example, Perry makes a big deal of the fact that Lee never personally owned a slave. He also notes that Lee condemned slavery. That is true, but he did not need to personally own a slave - his wife and her family owned more than one hundred slaves and at least one travelled with the family whenever they followed him in his army postings. Condemning slavery while benefitting from it is a difficult position to defend (ask any devotee of Jefferson.)

Clearly, the war was about more than just slavery, but as noted Civil War historian James McPherson notes in his book of essays about the Civil War entitled This Mighty Scourge, modern historians are re-discovering the primacy of slavery in the debates concerning secession. Charles B. Dew notes in Apostles of Disunion, "Defenders of the Lost Cause need only read the speeches and letters of the secession commissioners to learn what was really driving the Deep South to the brink of war in 1860-61."

Perry's biography of Lee, however, is quite good on the whole. He makes the details of Lee's early life interesting, including all of his postings around the country as an engineer in places such as St. Louis and New York City.

More than half of the book concerns his time in the service of the state of Virginia and the Confederate States of America in the Civil War. Perry's description of the battles and the politics of the war is solid, despite glaring glitches such as the time when he refers to the Battle Sharpsburg (Antietam) as "Strategically...relatively unimportant." (p. 167)

Antietam was a massive strategic loss for the Confederacy. This loss caused Lee to stop his strategy of bringing the war to the North for nearly a year and, even more importantly, provided Lincoln with the victory he needed (vague as this victory was) to issue the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation. This document brought in African American soldiers, stopped Britain's attempts to interfere in the war, and laid the groundwork for the laws and Constitutional Amendments that ended slavery forever. Some have argued that Antietam (Sharpsburg) was the most important battle of the war because of all of those strategic losses.

So, to sum up, this is a solid biography, but not perfect. Too much hero worship and a basic misunderstanding of the Union war strategy as typified by the fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of the Battle of Antietam.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lee: A Life of Virtue (The Generals series).

Reviewed September 25, 2010.

I reviewed this book in conjunction with Thomas Nelson's BookSneeze program. I was not compensated for this review. The opinions expressed are mine.

Review updated on July 27, 2024.

Patton: The Pursuit of Destiny by Agostino Von Hassell and Ed Breslin

Gives a solid background on one of America's iconic generals

Published in 2010 by Thomas Nelson

There have been thousands of generals that have served in the United States Military. Very few officers ever get "name" recognition. Washington, Grant, Pershing, MacArthur, Eisenhower. Patton stands right there with them, unique in the group of generals that I named because he was the only one that was always a subordinate officer, meaning that he was never in charge of an entire theater of war.

But, Patton inspires images of a general of action - impulsive, moving, always pushing, leading from the field. Modern tank warfare may have been perfected by Patton in the sense that he truly understood the need to coordinate air, naval, armor and GI's. He did more than understand it in theory - he actually did it on the ground in real life.

Patton: The Pursuit of Destiny is an attempt to dig behind the image to find out a little about the real Patton - a romantic family man (also a philanderer), the little boy that dreamed of the battlefield, the frustrations that accompanied his slow climb up the officer ranks (but helped by excellent connections), his fear of being afraid.

Von Hassell and Breslin are mostly successful in their attempt, although they are often repetitious in some of their points. For example, they tell the reader multiple times in the section on World War II that Patton's reputation as a glory hound was mitigated by the fact that he shared the glory so well with his men.

At times, the facts are written to make them seem more dramatic. For example, on page 117 they note that the U.S. army "had captured or killed more than 100,000 enemy troops"(p. 117) in the Sicily campaign (Operation Husky). Technically true but the numbers are 29,000 dead, missing or wounded Axis troops and 140,000 captured soldiers. Yes, it is common to include the captured in with the figures for the casualties, but this statistic seems written to inflate the death total.

At another point they just get facts wrong - not facts about Patton but about another general. They were trying to make the point that Patton did not squander his men, even while he was pushing them forward as fast as possible. The compare him to " 'Butcher Joe' Hooker, the Union general who to be relieved of command by President Lincoln early in the Civil War due to the appalling losses of life and limb incurred under his leadership." (p. xiii). Hooker's nickname was "Fighting Joe" and, ironically, he was dismissed due to tentative fighting in the latter part of the Battle of Chancellorsville and his lack of desire to chase down Robert E. Lee's army that was invading Pennsylvania and on its way to Gettysburg. Lincoln might well have excused a "Butcher Joe" on the grounds that at least he confronted the enemy. Ulysses S. Grant was the general with the nickname "Butcher". 

In many ways, Patton: The Pursuit of Destiny apologizes for Patton by denigrating his colleagues. Many times the reader is told that Montgomery and Eisenhower were too tentative in Patton's eyes. What we don't get is an historian's unbiased view about Patton's opinions. Were they? In Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7 1944-May 7, 1945 Ambrose asserts that Patton's tanks were out of gas, his men were low on supplies while he was advocating pushing forward into Germany - this might have created a "bulge" into Germany with the same results the Germans experienced with their bulge. A discussion of all sides would have been appropriate.

The book has many pictures of Patton, ranging from his childhood all the way through his World War II years. What the book also needed was maps - describing a map is so much less effective than just showing the reader why, for example, why the Battle of the Bulge was such a threat to the allies.

In sum, a good overview of the his life, but do not let this book be your only source about the complicated European Theater in World War II.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Patton: The Pursuit of Destiny by Agostino Von Hassell and Ed Breslin.

Reviewed on August 12, 2010.

I reviewed this book in conjunction with Thomas Nelson's BookSneeze program. I was not compensated for this review. The opinions expressed are mine.