Download or read book The General vs the President written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. "A highly readable take on the clash of two titanic figures in a period of hair-trigger nuclear tensions.... History offers few antagonists with such dramatic contrasts, and Brands brings these two to life." —Los Angeles Times At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world, when he suggested that General Douglas MacArthur, the willful, fearless, and highly decorated commander of the American and U.N. forces, had his finger on the nuclear trigger. At a time when the Soviets, too, had the bomb, the specter of a catastrophic third World War lurked menacingly close on the horizon. A correction quickly followed, but the damage was done; two visions for America’s path forward were clearly in opposition, and one man would have to make way. The contest of wills between these two titanic characters unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of a faraway war and terrors conjured at home by Joseph McCarthy. From the drama of Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin to the daring landing of MacArthur’s forces at Inchon to the shocking entrance of China into the war, The General and the President vividly evokes the making of a new American era.
Download or read book Truman MacArthur and the Korean War written by Dennis Wainstock and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1999-09-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A general history of the critical first year of the Korean War, this study deals primarily with relations between General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry S. Truman from June 1950 to April 1951, a period that defined the war's direction until General Mark Clark, the final U.N. Commander, signed the Armistice two years later. Although the ever-changing military situation is outlined, the main focus is on policymaking and the developing friction between Truman and MacArthur. Wainstock contradicts the common view that MacArthur and Truman were constantly at odds on the basic aims of the war. In the matter of carrying the fight to Communist China, MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs differed only on timing, not on the need for such action. The end of the Cold War has provided historians with a better opportunity to study the forces that shaped the thinking of America's leaders at the time of the Korean War. The sheer quantity of material now available, while daunting, is filled with colorful and outstanding personalities, dramatic action, and momentous actions that have had an impact on world events even to the present day. Wainstock ultimately concludes that Washington placed too much emphasis on anti-Communist ideology, rather than long-term national interest, in the decision first to intervene in the war and later to cross the crucial 38th Parallel. He also emphasizes the important contributions of General Matthew B. Ridgway in stopping the Chinese offensive and in influencing Washington's decision not to carry the war to Communist China.
Download or read book Truman written by David McCullough and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-08-20 with total page 1409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America’s beloved and distinguished historian. The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.
Download or read book MacArthur s War written by Bevin Alexander and published by Berkley. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Douglas MacArthur famously said there is no substitute for victory . . . As a United States general, he had an unparalleled genius for military strategy, and it was under his leadership that Japan was rebuilt into a democratic ally after World War II. But MacArthur carried out his zero-sum philosophy both on and off the battlefield. During the Korean War, in defiance of President Harry S. Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he pushed for an aggressive confrontation with Communist China - a position intended to provoke a wider war, regardless of the cost or consequences. MacArthur's ambition to stamp out Communism across the globe was in direct opposition to President Truman, who was much more concerned with containing the Soviet Union than confronting Red China. The infamous clash between the two leaders was not only an epic turning point in history, but the ultimate struggle between civil and military power in the United States. While other U.S. generals have challenged presidential authority - from Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War and George B. McClellan in the Civil War to General Stanley A. McChrystal in Afghanistan - no other military leader has ever so brazenly attempted to dictate national policy. In MacArthur's War, Bevin Alexander details MacArthur's military and political battles, from the alliances he made with Republican leaders to the threatening ultimatum he delivered to China against orders - the action that directly led to his dismissal on April 11, 1951. 'Bevin Alexander's MacArthur's Waris a superbly written, blow-by-blow account of the most controversial civil-military clash in American history. His riveting narrative pulls no punches as it reveals how the feisty U.S. president confronted America's most revered military hero against the backdrop of brutal Korean War combat.' Colonel Jerry D. Morelock, PhD, U.S. Army (Ret.), and editor in chief of Armchair General 'When President Harry Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of all his military commands at the height of the Korean War, it was a seminal moment in American history . . . Bevin Alexander's hard-hitting narrative captures in vivid detail the elements of that contest, as well as the chain of significant events that produced it . . . MacArthur's Waris a valuable account of a chapter in the Cold War that we must never forget.' Harry J. Middleton, founding director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library at the University of Texas, and author of LBJ- The White House Years 'Bevin Alexander has written a stirring and insightful account of General Douglas MacArthur's controversial role in the Korean War that culminated . . . Carlo D'Este, author of Patton- A Genius for War 'The last sentence of the introduction of MacArthur's War provides author Bevin Alexander's contention that 'Truman, in his quiet and unassuming way, saved the United States of America.' Thereafter the chapters build a very interesting account of Douglas MacArthur's initial brilliant Inchon assault, his strategy and tactics that led to rapid advances before his concepts for capturing and freeing North Korea collapsed in defeat, and finally his resort to political confrontation with the president. How and why he lost, tarnished his reputation, and justified the sweeping observation of Truman's impact is a fascinating, factual, and well-documented study. It is blunt, harsh, and critical of MacArthur's last year of service, more tolerant and understanding of Truman, but overall, a fair portrayal of history.' Generl Frederick J. Kroesen, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army and commander in chief, U.S. Army Europe Includes Photographs
Download or read book The Trials of Harry S Truman written by Jeffrey Frank and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the “beguiling” (The New York Times) first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how a seemingly ordinary man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century. The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic bomb and the development of far deadlier weapons; the start of the Cold War and the creation of the NATO alliance; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight a costly “limited war” in Korea. Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens and fought for a national health insurance plan. While he was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans and came to support stronger civil rights laws, he never relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of instinct and combativeness, as when he asserted a president’s untested power to seize the nation’s steel mills. The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible and “intimate” (The Washington Post) portrait of a man, born in the 19th century, who set the nation on a course that reverberates in the 21st century, a leader who never lost a schoolboy’s love for his country and its Constitution.
Download or read book Harry S Truman written by Robert Dallek and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The plainspoken man from Missouri who never expected to be president yet rose to become one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century In April 1945, after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the presidency fell to a former haberdasher and clubhouse politician from Independence, Missouri. Many believed he would be overmatched by the job, but Harry S. Truman would surprise them all. Few chief executives have had so lasting an impact. Truman ushered America into the nuclear age, established the alliances and principles that would define the cold war and the national security state, started the nation on the road to civil rights, and won the most dramatic election of the twentieth century—his 1948 "whistlestop campaign" against Thomas E. Dewey. Robert Dallek, the bestselling biographer of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, shows how this unassuming yet supremely confident man rose to the occasion. Truman clashed with Southerners over civil rights, with organized labor over the right to strike, and with General Douglas MacArthur over the conduct of the Korean War. He personified Thomas Jefferson's observation that the presidency is a "splendid misery," but it was during his tenure that the United States truly came of age.
Download or read book MacArthur in Asia written by Hiroshi Masuda and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Douglas MacArthur's storied career is inextricably linked to Asia. His father, Arthur, served as Military Governor of the Philippines while Douglas was a student at West Point, and the younger MacArthur would serve several tours of duty in that country over the next four decades, becoming friends with several influential Filipinos, including the country's future president, Emanuel L. Quezon. In 1935, he became Quezon's military advisor, a post he held after retiring from the U.S. Army and at the time of Japan’s invasion of 1941. As Supreme Commander for the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur led American forces throughout the Pacific War. He officially accepted Japan's surrender in 1945 and would later oversee the Allied occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951. He then led the UN Command in the Korean War from 1950 to 1951, until he was dismissed from his post by President Truman. In MacArthur in Asia, the distinguished Japanese historian Hiroshi Masuda offers a new perspective on the American icon, focusing on his experiences in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea and highlighting the importance of the general’s staff—the famous "Bataan Boys" who served alongside MacArthur throughout the Asian arc of his career—to both MacArthur’s and the region’s history. First published to wide acclaim in Japanese in 2009 and translated into English for the first time, this book uses a wide range of sources—American and Japanese, official records and oral histories—to present a complex view of MacArthur, one that illuminates his military decisions during the Pacific campaign and his administration of the Japanese Occupation.
Download or read book The Most Dangerous Man in America written by Mark Perry and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At times, even his admirers seemed unsure of what to do with General Douglas MacArthur. Imperious, headstrong, and vain, MacArthur matched an undeniable military genius with a massive ego and a rebellious streak that often seemed to destine him for the dustbin of history. Yet despite his flaws, MacArthur is remembered as a brilliant commander whose combined-arms operation in the Pacific -- the first in the history of warfare -- secured America's triumph in World War II and changed the course of history. In The Most Dangerous Man in America, celebrated historian Mark Perry examines how this paradox of a man overcame personal and professional challenges to lead his countrymen in their darkest hour. As Perry shows, Franklin Roosevelt and a handful of MacArthur's subordinates made this feat possible, taming MacArthur, making him useful, and finally making him victorious. A gripping, authoritative biography of the Pacific Theater's most celebrated and misunderstood commander, The Most Dangerous Man in America reveals the secrets of Douglas MacArthur's success -- and the incredible efforts of the men who made it possible.
Download or read book Memo Harry Truman written by Harry S. Truman and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1986-03-21 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plain Speaking written by Merle Miller and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Never has a President of the United States, or any head of state for that matter, been so totally revealed, so completely documented” (Robert A. Arthur). Plain Speaking is the bestselling book based on conversations between Merle Miller and the thirty-third President of the United States, Harry S. Truman. From these interviews, as well as others who knew him over the years, Miller transcribes Truman’s feisty takes on everything from his personal life, military service, and political career to the challenges he faced in taking the office during the final days of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. Using a series of taped discussions from 1962 that never aired on television, Plain Speaking takes an opportunity to deliver exactly how Mr. Truman felt about the presidency, and his thoughts in his later years on his accomplishments and the legacy he left behind. “The values of Plain Speaking, on the whole, are those of the highest form of political communication: the bull session. As with all good bull sessions, what is said here ranges widely in quality and seriousness, as one should expect when dealing with a complex man.” —The New York Times “Plain Speaking has a nostalgic, downhome quality of good friends gossiping over the back fence, or saying their piece of a twilight eve rocking on the porch—and if those fellas back in Washington have their secret machines running, well, they won’t like what they overhear. Not one little bit.” —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book MacArthur s War Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero written by Stanely Weintraub and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Douglas MacArthur written by Arthur Herman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 978 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, definitive life of an American icon, the visionary general who led American forces through three wars and foresaw his nation’s great geopolitical shift toward the Pacific Rim—from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of Gandhi & Churchill Douglas MacArthur was arguably the last American public figure to be worshipped unreservedly as a national hero, the last military figure to conjure up the romantic stirrings once evoked by George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee. But he was also one of America’s most divisive figures, a man whose entire career was steeped in controversy. Was he an avatar or an anachronism, a brilliant strategist or a vainglorious mountebank? Drawing on a wealth of new sources, Arthur Herman delivers a powerhouse biography that peels back the layers of myth—both good and bad—and exposes the marrow of the man beneath. MacArthur’s life spans the emergence of the United States Army as a global fighting force. Its history is to a great degree his story. The son of a Civil War hero, he led American troops in three monumental conflicts—World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Born four years after Little Bighorn, he died just as American forces began deploying in Vietnam. Herman’s magisterial book spans the full arc of MacArthur’s journey, from his elevation to major general at thirty-eight through his tenure as superintendent of West Point, field marshal of the Philippines, supreme ruler of postwar Japan, and beyond. More than any previous biographer, Herman shows how MacArthur’s strategic vision helped shape several decades of U.S. foreign policy. Alone among his peers, he foresaw the shift away from Europe, becoming the prophet of America’s destiny in the Pacific Rim. Here, too, is a vivid portrait of a man whose grandiose vision of his own destiny won him enemies as well as acolytes. MacArthur was one of the first military heroes to cultivate his own public persona—the swashbuckling commander outfitted with Ray-Ban sunglasses, riding crop, and corncob pipe. Repeatedly spared from being killed in battle—his soldiers nicknamed him “Bullet Proof”—he had a strong sense of divine mission. “Mac” was a man possessed, in the words of one of his contemporaries, of a “supreme and almost mystical faith that he could not fail.” Yet when he did, it was on an epic scale. His willingness to defy both civilian and military authority was, Herman shows, a lifelong trait—and it would become his undoing. Tellingly, MacArthur once observed, “Sometimes it is the order one disobeys that makes one famous.” To capture the life of such an outsize figure in one volume is no small achievement. With Douglas MacArthur, Arthur Herman has set a new standard for untangling the legacy of this American legend. Praise for Douglas MacArthur “This is revisionist history at its best and, hopefully, will reopen a debate about the judgment of history and MacArthur’s place in history.”—New York Journal of Books “Unfailingly evocative . . . close to an epic . . . More than a biography, it is a tale of a time in the past almost impossible to contemplate today as having taken place, with MacArthur himself as a figure perhaps too remote to understand, but all the more important to encounter.”—The New Criterion “With Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior, the prolific and talented historian Arthur Herman has delivered an expertly rendered, compulsively readable account that does full justice to MacArthur’s monumental achievements without slighting his equally monumental flaws.”—Commentary
Download or read book Countdown 1945 written by Chris Wallace and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "behind-the-scenes account of the 116 days leading up to the Americans attack on Hiroshima"--Dust jacket flap.
Download or read book Another Such Victory written by Arnold A. Offner and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a provocative and thoroughly documented reassessment of President Truman's profound influence on U.S. foreign policy and the Cold War. The author contends that Truman remained a parochial nationalist who lacked the vision and leadership to move the United States away from conflict and toward detente. Instead, he promoted an ideology and politics of Cold War confrontation that set the pattern for successor administrations."
Download or read book The Frozen Chosen written by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on unpublished first-hand accounts of the battle, this is a dramatic retelling of the desperate Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, where the heavily outnumbered US 1st Marine Division held off vastly superior Chinese forces before successfully withdrawing in good order. In November 1950 The US 1st Marine Division was trapped in the Chosin Reservoir following the intervention of Red China in the Korean War. Fought during the worst blizzard in a century, the ensuing battle is considered by the United States Marine Corps to be 'the Corps' Finest Hour.' The soldiers who fought there would later become known as the 'Frozen Chosen'. This incredible story is based on first hand interviews from surviving veterans, telling of heroism and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, as a handful of Marines fought desperately against wave after wave of Chinese forces. Sometimes forced into desperate hand to hand combat, the fighting retreat from Chosin marked one of the darkest moments for Western forces in Korea, but would go on to resonate with generations of Marines as a symbol of the Marine Corps' dogged determination, fighting skill, and never-say-die attitude on the battlefield.
Download or read book On Desperate Ground written by Hampton Sides and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers, a chronicle of the extraordinary feats of heroism by Marines called on to do the impossible during the greatest battle of the Korean War. "Superb ... A masterpiece of thorough research, deft pacing and arresting detail...This war story—the fight to break out of a frozen hell near the Chosin Reservoir—has been told many times before. But Sides tells it exceedingly well, with fresh research, gritty scenes and cinematic sweep." —The Washington Post On October 15, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of UN troops in Korea, convinced President Harry Truman that the Communist forces of Kim Il-sung would be utterly defeated by Thanksgiving. The Chinese, he said with near certainty, would not intervene in the war. As he was speaking, 300,000 Red Chinese soldiers began secretly crossing the Manchurian border. Led by some 20,000 men of the First Marine Division, the Americans moved deep into the snowy mountains of North Korea, toward the trap Mao had set for the vainglorious MacArthur along the frozen shores of the Chosin Reservoir. What followed was one of the most heroic--and harrowing--operations in American military history, and one of the classic battles of all time. Faced with probable annihilation, and temperatures plunging to 20 degrees below zero, the surrounded, and hugely outnumbered, Marines fought through the enemy forces with ferocity, ingenuity, and nearly unimaginable courage as they marched their way to the sea. Hampton Sides' superb account of this epic clash relies on years of archival research, unpublished letters, declassified documents, and interviews with scores of Marines and Koreans who survived the siege. While expertly detailing the follies of the American leaders, On Desperate Ground is an immediate, grunt's-eye view of history, enthralling in its narrative pace and powerful in its portrayal of what ordinary men are capable of in the most extreme circumstances. Hampton Sides has been hailed by critics as one of the best nonfiction writers of his generation. As the Miami Herald wrote, "Sides has a novelist's eye for the propulsive elements that lend momentum and dramatic pace to the best nonfiction narratives."
Download or read book The Soldier from Independence written by D. M. Giangreco and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing the little-known facts of Harry Truman's remarkable military performance, as a soldier and as a politician, The Soldier from Independence adds a whole new dimension to the already fascinating character of the thirty-third president of the United States. D. M. Giangreco shows how, as a field artillery battery commander in World War I, Truman was already making the hard decisions that he knew to be right, regardless of personal consequences. Truman oversaw the conclusion of the Second World War, stood up to Stalin, and met the test of North Korea's invasion of the South. He also had the fortitude to defy Gen. Douglas MacArthur, one of America's most revered wartime leaders, and ultimately fired the Far East commander, often characterized as the American Caesar. Filling in the details behind these world-changing events, this military biography supplies a heretofore missing--and critical--chapter in the story of one of the nation's most important presidents. The Soldier from Independence recounts the World War I military adventure that would mark a turning point in the life of a humble man who would go on to become commander in chief.
