Gratuitous Historickal Blegging

One of our readers dropped a very nice little note into the Tasty Bits (TM) Mail Sack this afternoon. Along with welcoming me into HMC and comparing notes on the reading of Narnia stories to children, she also informed me that she and her husband had started doing some research on MacArthur, not satisfied with the way Ken Burns apparently treats him in his latest teevee series (none of which I've seen). She asked me if I could recommend any good biographical material on the man.

Well, as I replied, I'm really not much use here, other than to note that MacArthur and I share the same birthday. William Manchester's American Caesar immediately springs to mind, but I can only recommend it on the author's general reputation, not having read it myself. And perhaps because as a kid I thought the ships and planes were much more interesting, my knowledge of the Pacific Theatre in WWII is much greater in terms of sea-borne leaders like Nimitz, Halsey and Fletcher than it is of Mac.

Anyhoo, I said that I would throw the question open to you lot. Any recommendations will, of course, be greatly appreciated (by both of us).

Yip! Yip!

I SHALL RETURN YIPS from Steve-O: Definitely American Caesar. Also, you can't go wrong with MacArthur's memoirs Reminisences written in the 1950s, keeping in mind how egotistical and self-serving an example of the genre they are. But a good read nonetheless, particularly when juxtaposed with Omar Bradley's memoirs A Soldier's Story.