Richard B. Frank

The particular value of this trilogy is that, over the last 10-15 years, the historical understanding of Chiang Kai-shek's war with Japan has been brought into much finer focus, and the result is that one is left with a more favorable image of Chiang. Not to mention that the government of the PRC has come to lean heavily on China's participation in World War II as a validation of Beijing's international legitimacy. These are realities that Frank is seeking to bring to a more general readership. Having fairly recently read some of the academic history that Frank leans upon in writing this work, you can argue that I'm not the main audience. But what I appreciate about Frank, thinking back to some of his earlier works, is that he does a particularly good job of putting the contingency back into controversial events, when 20/20 hindsight tends to warp the perception of how period decision makers came to make the choices they did. I look forward to the coming books in this trilogy with considerable enthusiasm.… (mer)

Seemed to be a fair and balanced look at MacArthur's life, a complex individual for certain. Much less critical of the view of the General one gets from Davis Halbertam's "The Coldest Winter", which discusses MacArthur during the Korean War. You get a sense from reading Richard Frank's book that like most of us, there are the good sides and the bad, and with someone in a leadership position such as General MacArthur's, it's inevitable that he'll have his serious detractors as well as his staunch supporters,and the real person probably incorporates parts of both.… (mer)