The General vs. the President; MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War by Brands, H. W - 2016

New York: Doubleday, 2016. First Edition [stated], Fourth printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Marsha Miller (author photograph). [10], 437, [1] pages. Endpaper maps. Illustrations. Prologue, Part One: Two Roads Up the Mountain, Part Two: Test of Nerve; Part Three: An Entirely New War; Part Four: The General vs. the President; and Part Five: Fade Away. Sources. Notes. Index. Henry William Brands Jr. (born August 7, 1953) is an American historian. He holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. in history in 1985. He has authored 30 books on U.S. history. His works have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. In his first year after completing his doctorate, Brands worked as an oral historian at the University of Texas School of Law. The year following he taught at Vanderbilt University. In 1987 he took a position at Texas A&M University, where he remained for the next seventeen years. In 2005, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was formerly the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History and Professor of Government and now holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History. In addition to his works on US history, Brands has works on the economic development of the United States and biographies of key leaders in corporate America. His writings have received critical and popular acclaim. He has appeared in the documentaries The Presidents (2005), 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America (2006), America: The Story of Us (2010), The Men Who Built America (2012), The World Wars (2014), and The Eighties (2016). From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands 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. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked by a reporter about the possible use of atomic weapons in response to China's entry into the war, Truman replied testily, "The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has." This 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. 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. Truman was one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Heir to a struggling economy, a ruined Europe, and increasing tension with the Soviet Union, on no issue was the path ahead clear and easy. General MacArthur, by contrast, was incredibly popular, as untouchable as any officer has ever been in America. The lessons he drew from World War II were absolute: appeasement leads to disaster and a showdown with the communists was inevitable--the sooner the better. In the nuclear era, when the Soviets, too, had the bomb, the specter of a catastrophic third World War lurked menacingly close on the horizon. 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.