From the #1 bestselling author of Fiasco and The Gamble , an epic history of the decline of American military leadership from World War II to Iraq

History has been kind to the American generals of World War II—Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley—and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. In The Generals , Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In part it is the story 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.” In The Generals we meet great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and those who failed themselves and their soldiers. Marshall and Eisenhower cast long shadows over this story, as does the less familiar Marine General O. P. Smith, whose fighting retreat from the Chinese onslaught into Korea in the winter of 1950 snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of annihilation.

But Korea also showed the first signs of an army leadership culture that neither punished mediocrity nor particularly rewarded daring. In the Vietnam War, the problem grew worse until, finally, American military leadership bottomed out. The My Lai massacre, Ricks shows us, is the emblematic event of this dark chapter of our history. In the wake of Vietnam a battle for the soul of the U.S. Army was waged with impressive success. It became a transformed institution, reinvigorated from the bottom up. But if the body was highly toned, its head still suffered from familiar problems, resulting in tactically savvy but strategically obtuse leadership that would win battles but end wars badly from the first Iraq War of 1990 through to the present.

Ricks has made a close study of America’s military leaders for three decades, and in his hands this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails.

［美］托馬斯•E. 裏剋斯（Thomas E.Ricks）

美國軍事記者中的“白頭海雕”

★ 兩次普利策國內新聞報道奬獲奬者

★《外交政策》雜誌的特約編輯

新美國安全中心研究員、中東問題專傢托馬斯• E. 裏剋斯是《華盛頓郵報》的資深軍事記者，主要負責報導美國在海外的軍事行動。其足跡遍布索馬裏、海地、朝鮮、科索沃、波斯尼亞、馬其頓、科威特、阿富汗、土耳其和伊拉剋等國。

早在2000 年，裏剋斯與其團隊寫下一係列闡述美軍應如何適應21 世紀新需求的文章，他因此獲得瞭普利策奬。2002 年，在詳細報導瞭美國反恐的初期行動後，剋裏斯再次榮膺普利策奬。

裏剋斯著有多本暢銷書，包括曾雄踞《紐約時報》暢銷書榜首的《大敗局》（Fiasco），該書曾角逐普利策奬。