Tanks for the memories - Political Booknotes

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2002 by Eric Umansky

Patton also had a penchant for wasting the lives of his own troops. Gen. Ornar Bradley, a longtime friend, observed that Patton was a "megalomaniac" who once needlessly sacrificed some of his soldiers in order to beat the British general Bernard Law Montgomery to an objective and win a bet between the two of them.

Hirshson's book has its faults, mostly little stuff, but they add up. He repeatedly mentions various players without reminding readers who they are. World War II was a big war, with thousands of characters, and I found myself lost amid a sea of brigadier generals, lieutenant colonels, colonels, majors, etc. Hirshson also has the same problem with army units and locations. It's hard to keep track of it all. This could have been helped by a more generous use of well-marked maps, of which the book offers only a handful. He also tends to plod through the history, giving equal play to events small and large.

Those are quibbles. Patton is a valuable read, especially for those interested in how the military is changing these days. After all, the Army is in the midst of a huge makeover, trying to morph from a heavy anti-Soviet force into something that's more nimble. Such a fundamental transformation has happened only a few times before, most notably when the Army slowly, and stubbornly, mechanized. One of the generals at the center of that change? George Patton.

ERIC UMANSKY is a columnist for SLATE.