Pershing and His Generals : Command and Staff in the AEF

Rating:
Summary: Important study of the AEF.
Review: The Great War found the United States unprepared, as is our custom. Excluding the Spanish American War debacle, we had never really fought overseas, and there was no one in the American military in 1917with any experience in the command or management of large formations. Fortunately there was John J. Pershing, who not only had the organizational skills but the political strength to build and hold together the new armies. Pershing's Herculean tasks of finding new leadership and eliminating deadwood, training the troops (and their leaders!), tapping civilian talent for special skills, organizing new staff functions and assimilating new technologies, so reminiscent of World War II, are well described here in Cooke's usual clear and workmanlike narrative; in a work essential for the World War I bookshelf and of interest to the general reader as well.

(The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)