RaveThe Wall Street JournalDickson resurrects a critical but overlooked period ... Weaving high drama with deep insight, Mr. Dickson describes the extraordinary challenges that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Army chief of staff, George C. Marshall, had to overcome to make the G.I. Army a reality ... Mr. Dickson argues convincingly that the precursor to the G.I. Army was the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal relief program designed to provide work during the Great Depression ... Mr. Dickson deftly weaves the story of such tentative steps toward forging the G.I. Army into a parallel narrative of fierce isolationism, borne of a belief that America’s involvement in World War I had been a colossal mistake ... Mr. Dickson’s rousing narrative of the simulated battles restores these important exercises to their central place in the history of the Army. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower observed in retrospect that the benefits of the maneuvers were \'incalculable\' ... Mr. Dickson also presents a poignant counter-narrative, that of black soldiers and civil-rights leaders struggling to overcome the strictures of segregation ... The best history is character-driven, and in this Mr. Dickson excels. He follows the fortunes of emerging Army stars such as Bradley, George S. Patton, Mark Clark and Eisenhower himself with verve and compassion ... indispensable.
Claudio Saunt
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal...Mr. Saunt presents a passionate and provocative account of what he calls “one of the first state-sponsored mass expulsions in the modern world”; the \'U.S. counterpart of Europe’s ‘Jewish question.\' ” He convincingly argues that the root cause of the expulsion of the Indian inhabitants of the South was a vile mix of racial antipathy, unbounded greed and the naive idealism of self-styled Indian experts ... Drawing on prodigious research into primary sources, Mr. Saunt offers the most detailed account to date of the mechanics of Indian expulsion ... Although Mr. Saunt does a highly commendable job in relating the plight of the Southern native peoples during the era of Indian Removal, he does not provide readers with a solid sense of who they were. The cultures of the tribes affected are not examined; neither are the long traditions of both intertribal and internal strife that prevented the Indians from uniting against the white onslaught. In this regard, occasional errors arise ... This aside, Unworthy Republic is a much-needed rendering of a disgraceful episode in American history that has been too long misunderstood.
James M. Fenelon
MixedThe Wall Street JournalJames M. Fenelon’s Four Hours of Fury purports to tell the tale of Operation Varsity and the subsequent drive into Hitler’s heartland. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on both counts ... Readers...never learn of the harrowing experiences of British troops whose large gliders made their landings even more treacherous than those of their American counterparts ... Readers also won’t learn from Mr. Fenelon of the tragic fate of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion ... Where Four Hours of Fury does succeed is in presenting the experiences of the fighting men of the 17th Airborne Division. Mr. Fenelon’s writing becomes inspired when he draws on his own experience to convey the sensation of dropping into combat ... Mr. Fenelon’s account would have been more valuable if he had directed his work to the full range of the operation’s fighting forces and had offered, given the operation’s death toll, a rigorous assessment of whether it was necessary.
Gordon H. Chang
RaveThe Wall Street JournalSignificant aspects of these men’s experience are necessarily subject to conjecture or have to be reconstructed. Despite this daunting impediment, Mr. Chang has accomplished the seemingly impossible. He has researched obscure American newspaper accounts. He has drawn on Central Pacific correspondence and financial records and made extrapolations from accounts of other contemporaneous Chinese immigrants. He has even evaluated archeological evidence. And he has written a remarkably rich, human and compelling story of the railroad Chinese ... In gripping prose, Mr. Chang evokes the challenges the Chinese railroad workers confronted ... Mr. Chang puts readers squarely into the shoes of the Chinese workers ... That book is clearly designed for an academic audience; fortunately, in Ghosts of Gold Mountain, Mr. Chang has mined expertly the extant material on the subject.
Bob Drury
RaveThe Wall Street JournalMasters of narrative history ... their finest work: The authors have not only told the epic story of endurance that the Valley Forge experience represents but also placed it squarely in the context of what was occurring on the political, diplomatic and broader military fronts ... Messrs. Drury and Clavin clearly admire Washington. Never do they sink into hagiography, however. Rather, they approach Washington’s leadership with a refreshing mix of detachment, appreciation of his strengths and acknowledgment of his shortcomings—as well as a nice dash of humor ... The authors are to be congratulated for not shortchanging the forces and personalities on the British side ... above all, is a deeply human chronicle of the events from Washington’s setbacks in autumn 1777 to his defeat of the British at the Battle of Monmouth Court House in June 1778 ... recounts an epic of suffering, endurance and martial rebirth that Americans should never forget.
Justin Martin
MixedThe Wall Street JournalHis deft human touch, evident throughout the narrative, makes for a complete sensory experience...But when Mr. Martin turns away from such details, he quickly gets lost ... hyperbolic ... kaleidoscopic and fragmented ... skewed ... Context and continuity are often lacking ... Readers interested in a soldier’s-eye view of Civil War combat will find aspects of A Fierce Glory rewarding. A satisfying narrative style, however, cannot raise the book to the level of a serious study of Antietam.
Colin G. Calloway
RaveThe Wall Street JournalThe fateful relationship between George Washington and the Indian tribes that bordered the new Republic is the subject of Colin G. Calloway’s brilliantly presented and refreshingly original The Indian World of George Washington ... Mr. Calloway deftly brings to life figures such as the Mohawk war chief and statesman Joseph Brant, the Miami war chief and realist Little Turtle and the bicultural Creek chief and consummate diplomat Alexander McGillivray—all towering figures who exercised the sort of outsize influence over the nation’s destiny that better known American Indian figures such as Sitting Bull and Geronimo never approached. An essential new entry in the literature of George Washington and the early Republic, The Indian World of George Washington conveys his interactions with Indians and the role of Indian land in Washington’s public and personal life \'from cradle to grave.\'
Peter Stark
RaveWall Street JournalMr. Stark presents these stormy events with rare narrative skill that engages all the reader’s senses, as in his rendition of the Battle of Fort Necessity ... Mr. Stark’s work is supremely entertaining: the pacing superb, the descriptions of conflict and wilderness travails rousing ... a worthy addition to the shelf of Washington biographies.
