I was very impressed with this book. It was highly rated in Dunnigan’s The World War II Bookshelf. I thought Old Soldiers Never Die (biography of MacArthur) also by Perrot was well written. Thus getting this book was a sure bet and I was not disappointed.

At West Point in the early 80’s, I took a great military history course covering WW1 and WW2 warfare. I still have those well written course texts. However, this book actually gave me some better history lessons than that course.

I think the impact of Marshall's leadership is clearly understated in most books. Perret spends a great deal of time reviewing how Marshall caused many of the better changes in the Army during the progress of the WW2 (and prior to our direct involvement). It is unfortunate that the challenging topic of individual soldiers replacements into fighting units never got clearly resolved. A tough nut to crack.

Early in the book there was a short but excellent summary of the basic division level tactics of WW1 (division square). Based on his experiences in WW1 with Pershing, Marshall led the later effort to evolve divisional level tactics into our modern warfare (triangular divisions with Combat Commands or brigade combat teams as they are called now).

There are excellent discussions of how the Army leadership sorted thru the balancing of artillery needs with maneuver forces and balancing tanks versus infantry.

At 600 pages long, I thought I might go blurry eyed, but the book kept my attention. I will admit an interest in Europe/Africa over the Pacific. So when chapters focused on the Pacific campaign I read those more quickly than other chapters.

Perret writes in style that is easy to read. Sometimes opinionated. He did not seem impressed with the British Army forces. However, he provides an apparent fair breakdown of his reasoning and positions throughout the book.

The book spends a fair amount of time reviewing logistical and training aspects of the growing Army. Stuff I never realized before.

For anyone interested in a good review of how the Army grew and evolved from a small, challenged pre-war force in the 1930’s into a world power by the end of the war, this is your book. Various higher profile personalities are reviewed to compliment biographies you might own.

This book is one of the front shelf books in my library. Recommended highly. ( )

A great book among a lot of books on WW II, many of which are repititous dreck. I know; I've read many of them. Perret's book is unique and fascinating: how did 16M Americans get from point A to point B, without a computer? Why did most people clog the rear areas, when the infantry companies were always short of men? He clobbers the myth of "unprepared America" with a nuanced picture of the desperate effort to eliminate the bottlenecks.