The Savior Generals · How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq by Hanson, Victor Davis -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Contents Prologue: Saving Lost Wars

What Wins Wars? Generals Still Matter The Suspect Few Lost Wars Won

Chapter One Athens Is Burning

Athens Aflame (September 480 B.C.) The Marathon Moment (August 490 B.C.) The Persians Come Back (Thermopylae and Artemisium, August 480 B.C.) Panic at Athens (September 480 B.C.) Holy Salamis (September 480 B.C.) A Most Unheroic End (Magnesia, Persian-held Asia Minor, 459 B.C.) The Road to Perdition (Athens, 480–463 B.C.) How Did Themistocles Do It? Themistoclean Counterfactuals The Character of Themistocles

Chapter Two Byzantium at the Brink

Chapter Three “Atlanta Is Ours and Fairly Won”

Who Was William Tecumseh Sherman? The Butchery (August 1864) Changing Strategies (March–August 1864) The Killing Fields (Summer 1864) Sherman Moves South (May 1864) The Long Slog (June 1864) Fabian Tactics (July 1864) The Promotion of Hood (July–August 1864) “So Atlanta Is Ours and Fairly Won” (September 1864) The Reelection of Lincoln (November 1864) Atlanta and Beyond (November 1864–April 1865) Misunderstanding Sherman The Sherman Way

Chapter Four One Hundred Days in Korea

The Nightmare (December 1950) Anatomy of a Collapse (September–December 1950) Everything Gone Wrong (August 1945–June 1950) On the Brink (December 1950–January 1951) Salvation (January–April 1951) The Ridgway Record (April 1951) Who Was Matthew Ridgway? A Korea Still Divided Ridgway and the Verdict of History

Chapter Five Iraq Is “Lost”

“The Willing Suspension of Disbelief” (September 10–11, 2007) From “Mission Accomplished” to Abject Nightmare (March 2003–December 2006) The Origins and Implementation of the Surge (2006) “The New Way Forward” (January 2007–November 2009) King David The Twenty Months Down from Olympus

Epilogue: A Rare Breed

Mavericks and Loners Preparation The Enemy with a Thousand Faces Grand Strategy War on All Fronts Saved—but Not Won? Magnanimity Soldiers’ Generals Retreat into the Shadows War Is Unchanging

Acknowledgments Notes

Chapter One: Athens Is Burning Chapter Two: Byzantium at the Brink Chapter Three: “Atlanta Is Ours and Fairly Won” Chapter Four: One Hundred Days in Korea Chapter Five: Iraq Is “Lost”

Bibliography A Note on the Author By the Same Author