This is a useful volume for those who lack the time to read all four volumes of Forrest Pogue's biography. Stoler, like Pogue and almost every other commentator, depicts Marshall as godlike. Indeed he was a man of unchallenged personal integrity, devotion to the nation, administrative genius and sensitivity to the role of the military in a democracy. But he comes through the pages of history as so flawless as to be uninteresting. There is a need for a critical study-not an ad hominem attack, but one that questions the received wisdom.