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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］托马斯•E. 里克斯（Thomas E.Ricks）

美国军事记者中的“白头海雕”

★ 两次普利策国内新闻报道奖获奖者

★《外交政策》杂志的特约编辑

新美国安全中心研究员、中东问题专家托马斯• E. 里克斯是《华盛顿邮报》的资深军事记者，主要负责报导美国在海外的军事行动。其足迹遍布索马里、海地、朝鲜、科索沃、波斯尼亚、马其顿、科威特、阿富汗、土耳其和伊拉克等国。

早在2000 年，里克斯与其团队写下一系列阐述美军应如何适应21 世纪新需求的文章，他因此获得了普利策奖。2002 年，在详细报导了美国反恐的初期行动后，克里斯再次荣膺普利策奖。

里克斯著有多本畅销书，包括曾雄踞《纽约时报》畅销书榜首的《大败局》（Fiasco），该书曾角逐普利策奖。