Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior

Herman distinguishes himself from the stack of more than twenty-five biographies written about MacArthur by grappling with a deeper issue than the public debate following the shocking dismissal by Truman in the midst of the Korean war. “America’s greatest war hero found himself dismissed by America’s least popular president…” Rather than simply regurgitating the well worn arguments, Herman exposes the shift of American values…”how have historians dealt with his legend, and how has the making of the legend obscured the truth, and the man underneath?” This chronicle of MacArthur’s life explores the events that shaped him from becoming the most decorated soldier to survive the First World War, the savior of the Pacific theater in the Second world War and the genius of Inchon, Korea. This author turns these episodes inside-out to examine how they were perceived then by MacArthur’s enemies and allies alike, and now by those who would demonize him or venerate him.

By the end, the reader peers beyond the perception of the image MacArthur presented, “like that of a knight of the Middle Ages,” and broadens the view to comprehend something fundamentally changed in the American psyche about what constituted a hero at the beginning of the last century and our lack of heroes now.