George Marshall; A Biography

New York: Harper, 2014. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Yousuf Karsh (Jacket Portrait). [8], 552 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Minor DJ wear. Irwin Unger died in 2021, shortly after his 94th birthday and the 51st anniversary of his marriage with Debi Unger, who was also his co-author. Irwin Unger was a professor of history at New York University. He was awarded the Pulitzer prize for The Greenback Era and has edited several standard history texts. He is the recipient of several Guggenheim fellowships and a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship. Debi Unger is a journalist who has collaborated with Irwin Unger on The Vulnerable Years, Twentieth-Century America, and Turning Point: 1968. She has also written "Portraits and Documents for These United States: The Questions of Our Past. Unger published widely. His first book, The Greenback Era, was so meticulously researched, solidly reasoned, and well written that it won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize in history. His scholarly interests ranged from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Sixties and the modern era. It is an impressive legacy that includes; George Marshall, (with Debi Unger and Stanley Hirshson, 2014), The Guggenheims: A Family History, (with Debi Unger, 2005), LBJ : A Life, (with Debi Unger, 1999), The Times Were a Changin': The Sixties Reader (with Debi Unger, 1998), The Best of Intentions: The Great Society Programs of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (1996), Turning Point, 1968, (with Debi Unger, 1988), The Vulnerable Years: The United States, 1896-1917 (1977), The Movement: The American New Left 1959-1973 (1973), The Greenback Era: A Political and Social History of American Finance (1964). A major historical biography of George C. Marshall—the general who ran the U.S. campaign during the Second World War, the Secretary of State who oversaw the successful rebuilding of post-war Europe, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—and the first to offer a complete picture of his life. While Eisenhower Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, MacArthur, Nimitz, and Leahy waged battles in Europe and the Pacific, one military leader actually ran World War II for America, overseeing personnel and logistics: Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 1939 to 1945, George C. Marshall. This interpretive biography of George C. Marshall follows his life from his childhood in Western Pennsylvania and his military training at the Virginia Military Institute to his role during and after World War II and his death in 1959 at the age of seventy-eight. It brings to light the virtuous historical role models who inspired him, including George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and his relationships with the Washington political establishment, military brass, and foreign leaders, from Harry Truman to Chiang Kai-shek. It explores Marshall's successes and failures during World War II, and his contributions through two critical years of the emerging Cold War—including the transformative Marshall Plan, which saved Western Europe from Soviet domination, and the failed attempt to unite China's nationalists and communists. Based on breathtaking research and filled with rich detail, George Marshall is sure to be hailed as the definitive work on one of the most influential figures in American history. Derived from a Kirkus review: A biography of George Marshall (1880-1959) focusing on the general's overall decency rather than his strategic brilliance. Having inherited this project after the death of historian Hirshson, the Ungers make a valiant attempt to cover Marshall's accomplished military career and his years as President Franklin Roosevelt's chief of staff and President Harry Truman's secretary of state. A graduate of Virginia Military Institute and a protégé of Gen. John Pershing, with early postings in the Philippines and China, Marshall could never garner the kind of position as commander of troops that would have ensured a glorious career. He was most effective at training officers in the late 1920s, organizing Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps in preparation for his move to Washington to take up a position with the War Plans Division and eventually become chief of staff. This indeed is what the authors believe he should best be remembered for: "creating the American World War II army virtually out of nothing." As Roosevelt's wartime right arm, Marshall pushed for the "Europe First" agenda and was deemed too valuable at home to spare as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. A yeoman's effort in service of an admirable subject in need of more good studies about him.