A whirlwind study of US army leadership from the time of George Marshall. The military has all but abandoned the practice of rewarding officer success and treating failure by giving another a chance at command (and the relieved officer another chance elsewhere), thereby deferring personnel decisions to civilian oversight, which the army abhors for operational reasons. The trend began with McArthur and has persisted through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The army reached its quotidian / tactical nadir in Vietnam and then recovered, but has has yet to come to grips with a strategic doctrine for winning (i.e., ending) 21st-century, asymmetric conflict. This remaining gap, Ricks asserts, is attributable to conventional, insular career paths. A fine organizational study free of jargon.