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The Savior Generals
How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq
The Savior Generals
How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq
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Description
Prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson explores the nature of leadership with his usual depth and vivid prose in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals (Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgway, and David Petraeus) who single-handedly saved their nations from defeat in war. War is rarely a predictable enterprise-it is a mess of luck, chance, and incalculable variables. Today's sure winner can easily become tomorrow's doomed loser. Sudden, sharp changes in fortune can reverse the course of war.
These intractable circumstances are sometimes mastered by leaders of genius-asked at the eleventh hour to save a hopeless conflict, one created by others and frequently unpopular politically and with the public. The savior generals often come from outside the established power structure, employ radical strategies, and flame out quickly. Their careers regularly end in controversy. But their dramatic feats of leadership are vital slices of history-not merely as stirring military narrative, but as lessons on the dynamic nature of consensus, leadership, and destiny.
Product details
| Published | 14 Aug 2014 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 320 |
| ISBN | 9781608193424 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Press |
| Dimensions | 210 x 140 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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An instructive series of portraits of five military outsiders called in to turn defeat into victory.
Kirkus Reviews
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It is not really news that Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book. He has done that before and repeatedly, on a variety of subjects.
The Washington Examiner
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Students of military leadership will be intrigued by Hanson's astute set of cases.
Booklist
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Mr. Hanson's fluency with a broad range of historical epochs, which has made him one of his generation's most notable historians, is on full display in The Savior Generals.
Mark Moyar, Wall Street Journal
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An engaging book in which the action on the battlefield is placed within a larger perspective of the politics and the societies that go to war, and the qualities of the generals who fight those battles.
The Baltimore Sun
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Provides widely applicable insight regarding the dynamics of leadership and consensus, and how those dynamics can change the destiny of nations.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

























