Grant & Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1957. Second U.S. Edition. Hardcover. 335 pages. Maps. Appendix. References. Index. Some scratching to boards. Major General John Frederick Charles "Boney" Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO (1 September 1878 – 10 February 1966) was a senior British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armored warfare, including categorizing principles of warfare. With 45 books and many articles, he was a highly prolific author whose ideas reached army officers and the interested public. He explored the business of fighting, in terms of the relationship between warfare and social, political, and economic factors in the civilian sector. Fuller emphasized the potential of new weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, to stun a surprised enemy psychologically. After the First World War Fuller collaborated with B. H. Liddell Hart in developing new ideas for the mechanization of armies, launching a crusade for the modernization of the British Army. Chief instructor of Camberley Staff College from 1923, he became military assistant to the chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1926. Fuller turned down the command of the Experimental Mechanized Force. Fuller believed he would be unable to devote himself to the Experimental Mechanized Force and the development of mechanized warfare techniques without extra staff to assist him with the additional extraneous duties, which the War Office refused to allocate. He was promoted to major general in 1930 and retired three years later to devote himself entirely to writing. This Second Edition contains a new foreword by Fuller. Fuller challenges the conventional view that Grant was a butcher and Lee one of the greatest generals this world has ever seen. First published in 1932, Fuller's study of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee remains one of his most brilliant and durable works, Grant and Lee is a compelling study not only of the two men, but also of the nature of leadership and command in wartime. In Fuller's view Grant was not only the greatest general of the Civil War, but ranks among the greatest strategists of any age. Fuller generated even more controversy with his contention that Robert E. Lee in several respects had major failings as a military leader. Major General J. F. C. Fuller was no ordinary soldier writing about the Civil War. Fuller writes with clarity and precision. He makes careful use of firsthand accounts; he paid particular attention to opinions of staff officers, as men in these roles were likely to have gained greater insight into the personalities of Grant and Lee. He also utilized the opinions of foreign witnesses of the war, like Colonel Fremantle, as a check on insiders' observations. His sources were identified through extensive end notes as he realized that his findings would be controversial. He includes statistics on battle losses to illustrate that the persistent belief that Grant's losses were abnormally high is simply a myth, and that Lee's percentage losses were actually higher. There are many exceptionally good books on the Civil War, but there are few that are as readable as Fuller's Grant and Lee, and offer such a fresh viewpoint. Condition: good.
Keywords: Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Generalship, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, W. T. Sherman, James Longstreet
[Book #52759]
Price: $75.00