Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prologue. Captain William DePuy and the 90th Division in Normandy, summer 1944 -- pt. 1. World War II. General George G. Marshall : the leader ; Dwight Eisenhower : how the Marshall system worked ; George Patton : the specialist ; Mark Clark : the man in the middle ; "Terrible Terry" Allen : conflict between Marshall and his protégés ; Eisenhower manages Montgomery ; Douglas MacArthur : the general as presidential aspirant ; William Simpson : the Marshall system and the new model American general -- pt. 2. The Korean War. William Dean and Douglas MacArthur : two generals self-destruct ; Army generals fail at Chosin ; O. P. Smith succeeds at Choisin ; Ridgway turns the war around ; MacArthur's last stand ; The organization man's Army.

Pt. 3. The Vietnam War. Maxwell Taylor : architect of defeat ; William Westmoreland : the organization man in command ; William DePuy : World War II-style generalship in Vietnam ; The collapse of generalship in the 1960s ; Tet '68 : the end of Westmoreland and the turning point of the war ; My Lai : General Koster's cover-up and General Peers's investigation ; The end of a war, the end of an Army -- pt. 4. Interwar. DuPuy's great rebuilding ; "How to teach judgment" -- pt. 5 nd the hidden costs of rebuilding. Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and the empty triumph of the 1991 war ; The ground war : Schwarzkopf vs. Frederick Franks ; The post-Gulf War military ; Tommy R. Franks : two-time loser ; Ricardo Sanchez : over his head ; George Casey : trying but treading water ; David Petraeus : an outlier moves in, then leaves -- Epilogue. Restoring American military leadership.