Also of interest...in portraits of American generals

All In

by Paula Broadwell (Penguin, $30)

Paula Broadwell’s account of David Petraeus’s first year as the U.S. commander in Afghanistan will have those who know him “nodding in recognition,” said Max Boot in The Wall Street Journal. A West Point graduate herself, Broadwell isn’t a combat reporter on the level of Bing West, and her behind-the-scenes material doesn’t contain any of the “embarrassing” revelations that make news. But so what? She’s “dead-bang accurate” in capturing Petraeus’s character and leadership style.

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The Operators

by Michael Hastings (Blue Rider, $28)

Michael Hastings’s report from inside the Afghanistan war machine is a “polarizing book about a polarizing war,” said Matt Gallagher in TheDailyBeast​.com. Built around Hastings’s controversial Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which led to McChrystal’s 2010 resignation, The Operators also takes other journalists to task for being too obsequious while covering military leaders. Not some “pop-culture puff piece,” this is “a book of great consequence” that demands reading.

Westmoreland

by Lewis Sorley (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30)

“Reading Lewis Sorley’s scalding biography of Gen. William Westmoreland is like watching a slow-motion replay of an oncoming train wreck,” said Tony Perry in the Los Angeles Times. Sorley’s Westmoreland is “arrogant, duplicitous, and not altogether smart,” and if you think the author is devastating when detailing Westmoreland’s failures as the Army’s top commander in Vietnam, wait until you meet this book’s defensive, delusional protagonist in retirement.

Marshall and His Generals

by Stephen R. Taaffe (Univ. of Kansas, $38)

Gen. George Marshall was the Army’s “indispensable man” during World War II, said John M. Taylor in The Washington Times. “Rigidly self-disciplined,” the Army chief of staff and chief military adviser to President Roosevelt “dominated official Washington by means of his integrity, the force of his personality, and his keen intelligence.” Historian Stephen R. Taaffe’s new biography offers an insightful assessment not only of Marshall but also of 38 other generals who operated within his sphere.