When General Douglas MacArthur led Allied troops into the jungles of New Guinea in World War II, he was already looking ahead. By successfully leapfrogging Japanese forces on that island, he placed his armies in a position to fulfill his personal promise to liberate the Philippines.

The New Guinea campaign has gone down in history as one of MacArthur's shining successes. Now Stephen Taaffe has written the definitive history of that assault, showing why it succeeded and what it contributed to the overall strategy against Japan. His book tells not only how victory was gained through a combination of technology, tactics, and Army-Navy cooperation, but also how the New Guinea campaign exemplified the strategic differences that plagued the Pacific War, since many high-ranking officers considered it a diversionary tactic rather than a key offensive.

"MacArthur's Jungle War" examines the campaign's strategic background and individual operations, describing the enormous challenges posed by jungle and amphibious warfare. Perhaps more important, it offers a balanced assessment of MacArthur's leadership and limitations, revealing his reliance on familiar battle plans and showing the vital role that subordinates played in his victory. Taaffe tells how MacArthur played the difficulties of the New Guinea campaign by maintaining his undivided attention on reaching the Philippines. He also discloses how MacArthur frequently deceived both his superiors and the public in order to promote his own agenda, and examines errors the general would later repeat on a larger scale up through the Korean War.

"MacArthur's Jungle War" offers historians a more analytical treatment of the New Guinea campaign than is found in previous works, and is written with a dramatic flair that will appeal to military buffs. By revealing the interaction among American military planning, interservice politics, MacArthur's generalship, and the American way of war, Taaffe's account provides a clearer understanding of America's Pacific war strategy and shows that the New Guinea offensive was not a mere backwater affair, but a critical part of the war against Japan.

During the Civil War, thirty-six officers in the Army of the Potomac were assigned corps commands of up to 30,000 men. Collectively charged with leading the Union's most significant field army, these leaders proved their courage in countless battlefields from Gettysburg to Antietam to Cold Harbor. Unfortunately, courage alone was not enough. Their often dismal performances played a major role in producing this army's tragic record, one that included more defeats than victories despite its numerical and materiel superiority.

Stephen Taaffe takes a close look at this command cadre, examining who was appointed to these positions, why they were appointed, and why so many of them ultimately failed to fulfill their responsibilities. He demonstrates that ambitious officers such as Gouverneur Warren, John Reynolds, and Winfield Scott Hancock employed all the weapons at their disposal, from personal connections to exaggerated accounts of prowess in combat, to claw their way into these important posts.

Once there, however, as Taaffe reveals, many of these officers failed to navigate the tricky and ever-changing political currents that swirled around the Army of the Potomac. As a result, only three of them managed to retain their commands for more than a year, and their machinations caused considerable turmoil in the army's high command structure. Taaffe also shows that their ability or inability to get along with generals such as George McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker, George Meade, and Ulysses Grant played a big role in their professional destinies.

In analyzing the Army of the Potomac's corps commanders as a group, Taaffe provides a new way of detailing this army's chronic difficulties--one that, until now, has been largely neglected in the literature of the Civil War.

American fortunes were at a low point in the winter of 1777-78. The British had beaten the Continental Army at Brandywine and Germantown, seized the colonial capital of Philadelphia, and driven Washington's soldiers into barren Valley Forge. But, as Stephen Taaffe reveals, the Philadelphia Campaign marked a turning point in the American Revolution despite these setbacks.

Occurring in the middle of the war in the heart of the colonies, this key but overlooked campaign dwarfed all others in the war in terms of numbers of combatants involved, battles fought, and casualties sustained. For the first time, British and American armies engaged out in the open on relatively equal terms. Although the British won all the major battles, they were unable to crush the rebellion.

Taaffe presents a new narrative history of this campaign that took place not only in the hills and woods surrounding Philadelphia, but also in east central New Jersey and along the Delaware River. He uses the campaign to analyze British and American strategies, evaluate Washington's leadership, and assess the role of subordinate officers such as Nathanael Greene and Anthony Wayne. He also offers new insights into eighteenth-century warfare and shows how Washington transcended traditional military thinking to fashion a strategy that accommodated American social, political, and economic realities.

During this campaign Washington came into his own as a commander of colonial forces and an astute military strategist, and Taaffe demonstrates that Washington used the fighting around Philadelphia as a proving ground for strategies that he applied later in the war. Taaffe also scrutinizes Washington's relationship with the militia, whose failure to carry out its missions contributed to the general's problems.

Still, by enduring their losses and continuing to fight, the Americans exacted a heavy toll on Britain's resources, helped to convince France to enter the war, and put the redcoats on the defensive. As Taaffe shows, far from being inconclusive, the Philadelphia Campaign contributed more to American victory than the colonists recognized at the time.

General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army during World War II, faced the daunting task not only of overseeing two theaters of a global conflict but also of selecting the best generals to carry out American grand strategy. "Marshall and His Generals" is the first and only book to focus entirely on that selection process and the performances, both stellar and disappointing, that followed from it. Stephen Taaffe chronicles and critiques the background, character, achievements, and failures of the more than three dozen general officers chosen for top combat group commands--from commanders like Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur to some nearly forgotten.

Taaffe explores how and why Marshall selected the Army's commanders. Among his chief criteria were character (including "unselfish and devoted purpose"), education, (whether at West Point, Fort Leavenworth, or the Army War College), and striking a balance between experience and relative youth in a war that required both wisdom and great physical stamina. As the war unfolded, Marshall also factored into his calculations the combat leadership his generals demonstrated and the opinions of his theater commanders.

Taaffe brings into sharp focus the likes of Eisenhower, MacArthur, George Patton, Omar Bradley, Walter Krueger, Robert Eichelberger, Courtney Hodges, Lucian Truscott, J. Lawton Collins, Alexander "Sandy" Patch, Troy Middleton, Matthew Ridgeway, Mark Clark, and twenty-five other generals who served in the conflict. He describes their leadership and decision-making processes and provides miniature biographies and personality sketches of these men drawn from their personal papers, official records, and reflections of fellow officers.

Delving deeper than other studies, this path-breaking work produces a seamless analysis of Marshall's selection process of operational-level commanders. Taaffe also critiques the performance of these generals during the war and reveals the extent to which their actions served as stepping stones to advancement.

Ambitious in scope and filled with sharp insights, "Marshall and His Generals" is essential reading for anyone interested in World War II and military leadership more generally.

When the Revolutionary War began, Congress established a national army and appointed George Washington its commander in chief. Congress then took it upon itself to choose numerous subordinate generals to lead the army's various departments, divisions, and brigades. How this worked out in the end is well known. Less familiar, however, is how well Congress's choices worked out along the way. Although historians have examined many of Washington's subordinates, Washington's Revolutionary War Generals is the first book to look at these men in a collective, integrated manner. A thoroughgoing study of the Revolutionary War careers of the Continental Army's generals - their experience, performance, and relationships with Washington and the Continental Congress - this book provides an overview of the politics of command, both within and outside the army, and a unique perspective on how it affected Washington's prosecution of the war. It is impossible to understand the outcome of the War for Independence without first examining America's military leadership, author Stephen R. Taaffe contends. His description of Washington's generals - who they were, how they received their commissions, and how they performed - goes a long way toward explaining how these American officers, who were short on experience and military genius, prevailed over their professional British counterparts. Following these men through the war's most important battles and campaigns as well as its biggest controversies, such as the Conway Cabal and the Newburgh Conspiracy, Taaffe weaves a narrative in the grand tradition of military history. Against this backdrop, his depiction of the complexities and particulars of character and politics of military command provides a new understanding of George Washington, the War for Independence, and the U.S. military's earliest beginnings. A unique combination of biography and institutional history shot through with political analysis, this book is a thoughtful, deeply researched, and an eminently readable contribution to the literature of the Revolution.

Wedged chronologically between World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War-which began with North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June of 1950-possessed neither the virtuous triumphalism of the former nor the tragic pathos of the latter. Most Americans supported defending South Korea, but there was considerable controversy during the war as to the best means to do so-and the question was at least as xasperating for American army officers as it was for the general public. A longtime historian of American military leadership in the crucible of war, Stephen R. Taaffe takes a close critical look at how the highest ranking field commanders of the Eighth Army acquitted themselves in the first, decisive year in Korea. Because an army is no better than its leadership, his analysis opens a new perspective on the army's performance in Korea, and on the conduct of the war itself. In that first year, the Eighth Army's leadership ran the gamut from impressive to lackluster-a surprising unevenness since so many of the high-ranking officers had been battle-tested in World War II. Taaffeattributes these leadership difficulties to the army's woefully unprepared state at the war's start, army personnel policies, andGeneral Douglas MacArthur's corrosive habit of manipulating his subordinates and pitting them against each other. He explores the personalities at play, their pre-war experiences, the manner of their selection, their accomplishments and failures, and, of course, their individual relationships with each other and MacArthur. By explaining who these field, corps, and division commanders were, Taaffe exposes the army's institutional and organizational problems that contributed to its up-anddown fortunes in Korea in 1950-1951. Providing a better understanding of MacArthur's controversial generalship, Taafee's book offers new and invaluable insight into the army's life-and-death struggle in America's least understood conflict.