Douglas Macarthur

Prophet or anachronism? Romantic hero or vain mountebank? MacArthur is an American icon—and fashioned himself as such. Now, more than half a century after his death, Arthur Herman finds new sources and delivers a biography of MacArthur that peels back the layers of myth, both pro and con, and exposes the marrow of the man beneath. Douglas MacArthur’s life spanned the emergence of the American army as a global fighting force. Its history is to a great degree his story, from his early heroism on the battlefields of World War I, to his command of the Pacific in World War II, to his contentious leadership in the Korean War. More than any previous biographer, Herman shows how MacArthur’s strategic vision helped shape several decades of U.S. foreign policy—in war and in peace.