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Fifty years after his death, General George C. Patton Jr. remains one of the most colorful, charismatic, misunderstood, and controversial figures ever to set foot on the battlefields of World War II. And the image of the man has been not a little influenced by the 1970 film "Patton," starring George C. Scott, in which he is portrayed as a swashbuckling, brash, profane, impetuous general who wore ivory-handled pistols into battle and slapped two hospitalized soldiers in Sicily.It is one of the achievements of this riveting biography that it reveals the complex and contradictory personality that lay behind the facade. With full access to Patton's private and public papers, and the cooperation of the general's family, Carlo D'Este shows us not only the extrovert Patton of public perception, but also the intensely private Patton--the devoted student of history, the poet, the humble man very unsure of his own abilities--who could burst into tears, be charming or insulting quite unexpectedly, and the Patton who trained himself for greatness with a determination matched by no other general in the twentieth century. D'Este describes Patton's patrician background with its strong military heritage in the CivilWar on the Confederate side; his struggle to overcome dyslexia to get through West Point; his lifelong doubts about his own courage that forced him to take reckless chances; and the enduring and sometimes troubled marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Beatrice Ayer, daughter of a wealthy Boston family, who proved to be a tower of strength and devotion to a soldier husband who was miserable in peacetime.This book also covers Patton's military career from his dramatic role in the 1916 campaign against Pancho Villa in northern Mexico to his service in France in World War I, where he organized and led the first U.S. tank corps at Saint-Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne offensive (where he was seriously wounded), to his frequently brilliant and occasionally very controversial roles during World War II in the fighting in North Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany, where he earned the reputation of being the allied general the Germans most feared and respected."Patton: A Genius for War" is a full-fledged portrait of an extraordinary American.

"Mr. D'Este tells this story well, and gives us a new understanding of this great and troubled man."

Douglas Brinkley

"Carlo D'Este's biography of Patton may prove to be his life's work...The result of the author's meticulous documentation is to produce a Patton even weirder, even more unsettling than anything offered by the cinema or television....This book is a magnificent portrait of the American army as an institution."

Mark Yost, Wall Street Journal, 12/08/1995

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