This is an excellent book on a number of counts. It is excellent history, with the biographies and background on four significant U. S. Army leaders in the Second World War. That history will supplement other readings about that War and the period and enrich your understanding of both.
This is also an excellent book about leadership. You'll find material that will help you understand leadership in a variety of setting.
But this book is also unique. It covers some topics that simply are not covered in other military biographies, historical texts, or books on leadership. Puryear introduces the factors of luck and circumstance into his studies in both the individual biographies and comparisons.
That consideration of environmental factors makes this book especially powerful as a guide to career management. The author does a great job of describing how earlier connections and mentors aided the subjects in their later life. He describes the kinds of learning experiences they had from assignments that, perhaps at first, did not seem especially desirable. He discusses the role of friendship in leadership.
This is an excellent book to read for the history or the career guidance.
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Created/Revised/Reviewed: 24 August 2002
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