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Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur. By Geoffrey Perret. New York: Random House, 1996. ISBN 0-679-42882-8. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Index. Pp. xii, 663. $32.50.
General Douglas MacArthur overpromised in his famous speech to Congress on 19 April 1951, dying an old soldier only in 1964 and never fading away. Geoffrey Perret now joins a lengthy list of amateur and professional historians who have written biographies of MacArthur, concluding that he was "the second-greatest soldier in American history . . . to Ulysses S. Grant" (p. 589). Opening with coverage of MacArthur's Scottish ancestry and the career of his father, General Arthur MacArthur, this study closes with his death after operations for biliary cirrhosis and a strangulating hernia. In between, Perret retells with admiration the familiar story of MacArthur's education at West Texas Military Academy and West Point, combat experiences in Mexico and France, term as U.S. Army Chief of Staff, and two stints in the Philippines. Detailed discussion of MacArthur's activities in World War II episodically and tediously consumes roughly half the book, while "his greatest achievement" (p. 471) as overlord of Japan receives superficial treatment. Perret attributes his misjudgments during the Korean War to advanced age, although the Inchon landing...