Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 129

BOOK REVIEWS

MR BOOK REVIEWS
AMERICAN GENERAL: The Life and Times of
William Tecumseh Sherman
John S.D. Eisenhower, New American Library
Caliber, New York, 2014, 352 pages

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he late John S.D. Eisenhower’s conclusive
biographic work centers on the life and times
of arguably the first “modern general,” Gen.
William Tecumseh Sherman. Completed shortly
before his December 2013 death,
Eisenhower presents Sherman’s
life from his humble Ohio orphan
beginnings, to his post–antebellum
career as Army general-in-chief,
and eventually to his days as a private citizen.
We learn how young “Cump”
was raised by family and family
friends after the untimely death
of his father. We see a young
Sherman enter into the United
States Military Academy at West
Point and earn high marks and
an acceptable standing in class, only to be seen as “no
soldier” by his peers and superiors. At West Point and
during follow-on assignments throughout the southern
United States, we see Sherman’s early interactions with
men who would later play pivotal parts in his Civil
War career to include future Union Generals Halleck,
Thomas, Rosecrans, and most importantly, Grant.
Eisenhower, as he has done in previous works, lets
the subjects speak for themselves. Through the author’s
exhaustive research we read of Sherman’s courtship
of the future Ellen Sherman, and we get a sense of
his thoughts and feelings on events of his day such as
the California gold rush, the legislative Compromise
of 1850, and ultimately, the key events leading up to
the tragic Civil War. Eisenhower takes time to present Sherman not as the “beast” with an appetite for
war that Southerners of his generation and their
MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2015

descendants would long remember, but as a man who
hoped that war could be avoided. The author then
paints an effusive picture of Sherman as the nation goes
to war and the general matures over the course of various battles, including Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga,
Atlanta, and the notorious “march to the sea.”
Between the narratives of the many battles Sherman
participated in, we discern the intimacy Grant and
Sherman share as they stand by one another through
periods of both national adulation and tribulation.
Eisenhower does not just collect and rehash various
battles, but takes great care to show
the evolution and formulation of strategy through the participatory eyes of
Sherman, and how that view was both
right and wrong at times.
The only critique of the storied author
I offer is his light treatment of Sherman’s
post-bellum tenure as general-in-chief, a
period Eisenhower states “was not significant.” I disagree that this time, 1869-1883,
was insignificant, especially in the West
where the Army fought a new form of
warfare against a worthy adversary—the
Native American. This book is worthwhile
for those in the security community wanting to learn
more about the development of “the modern general”
and those with a general interest in the Civil War.
Maj. Joshua B. Jordan, U.S. Army, Fort Lee, Va.

PROCEED TO PESHAWAR: The Story of a U.S.
Navy Intelligence Mission on the Afghan Border,
1943
George J. Hill, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis,
Maryland, 2013, 288 pages

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t. Albert Zimmermann, U.S. Navy Reserve, was
a young naval intelligence officer in 1943. By
chance, he became a central figure in a moderately exotic, though not particularly consequential,
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