In This Review

Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War
Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War
By Eric Larrabee
Bessie/Harper & Row, 1987, 723 pp.

The theme of this immensely readable military history is the intangible quality of leadership displayed by Roosevelt and the men he picked or approved for high command during World War II: Marshall, King, Arnold, Vandegrift, MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, Stilwell, LeMay. The book, based on a mastery of the published literature, is written in heroic style, treating war as triumph, not as hell.

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