This book about the wartime and post-war professional relationship between Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall was much better than I expected. I don't generally read biographical books and my knowledge of the Allied High Command has been lacking. This book did a good job of filling that need. Well written, if in need of a little trivia checking (the 82nd AB not the 101st parachuted onto the Salerno beachhead) and a little less opinion by the author (although I agreed with most of them) would have made this a really outstanding book. I will admit I just skimmed the post-war relationship between Eisenhower and Marshall, since that wasn't my interest, but overall well done. It continues to amaze me, the more I learn, how the Allies managed to hold together and win the war. The British and American high commands really, really didn't like each other very much most of the time, and it was only the sheer will of Roosevelt and Franklin that kept the war going, it seems to me. The Allied relationship nearly brokedown over British and American machinations to get their strategy pushed as the Allied strategy and the book really shows how Eisenhower was truly the right man in the right place to make it all work together. Every new book I read convinces me that the victory was much, much more narrow than most people, and sadly, most conventional texts, think.
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