Blumenson, Martin.

A re-creation of the life and career of this army general that uses liberal quotes from Patton and his family. An incisive study of General George Patton probes the sensitivity, emotionality, and insecurities that were concealed behind the public facade of a macho military man and that also produced one of the world's greatest generals.

He stands with the other celebrated Americans who led the Allied victory in Europe—Eisen- hower, Bradley, Patton. But never before has there been a full-length treatment of General Mark Wayne Clark. It is a surprising oversight, for Clark was important. He was also as fascinat- ing as any of the others, full of striking contra- dictions. Was he, for example, a heroic com- mander or—as many claimed—a glory hound who rigged his campaigns for maximum public- ity and was responsible for deadly fiascos in Italy? Now Martin Blumenson, eminent historian and author of the monumental work The Patton Papers, gives Clark the rich and authoritative study he deserves. His account begins with Clark’s boyhood in Illinois—he was the son of an army officer and an Arizona frontierswoman— and progresses quickly to the onset of war and Clark’s stunningly swift rise in rank. Here is the whole story of his famous secret mission to enemy-occupied North Africa, its triumph and also its comic sidelight. New material—much from Clark’s own diary—reveals formerly unsus- pected frictions in the Anglo-American com- mand and sheds new light on Eisenhower and George Marshall. The bloody battles of Anzio, Rapido, and Cassino take on new meaning when seen as Clark saw them. And it is little known that after the war, Clark played a major role in keeping Austria out of the Soviet orbit and in achieving the Korean armistice. Mark Clark brings us a colorful, complex man who stood at the center of the cataclysmic events of his time.

Operations from the invasion of the Italian mainland near Salerno through the winter fighting up to the battles for Monte Cassino (including the Rapido River crossing) and the Anzio beachhead.

"By the end of 1943 the Allied campaign in Italy had become a stalemate as German forces stopped the Allied advance cold at Cassino. In a country where the fighting front could be no longer than the eighty-mile width of the Italian peninsula, in a region where rugged mountains impeded maneuvers and favored the defense, in an effort where Allied resources were sharply restricted and winter was looming, prospects for a swift and decisive victory were slim. Battling their way up the Italian mainland promised to be a slow and bloody affair.". "In January 1944 the Allies, prodded by an eager Churchill, decided to circumvent the Germans' frontal opposition by making an amphibious landing at Anzio, a small town about an hour's drive from Rome. The resulting four-month battle has been adjudged by some as one of the most ill-conceived operations of the war and by others as one of the notorious lost opportunities of the Allied war effort. But for the thousands of Allied soldiers desperately fighting and dying in mud and freezing rain, Anzio became an epic stand on a lonely beachhead."--BOOK JACKET.

Strategic history of the clash between German and Allied forces in Normandy during World War 2.

V. 1. Soldier, general of the army, President-elect, 1890-1952--v. 2. The President. A portrait of the man, both decent and complex, who is increasingly regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest Presidents.