Having written two books on the U.S. Army's senior officers in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe extends his investigation of ground forces’ senior leadership to the Korean War. His latest book evaluates the generals of the United Nations Command (UNC), the U.S. Eighth Army, and the U.S. X Corps. His work extends the analysis in D. Clayton James, Refighting the Last War: Command and Crisis in Korea, 1950–1953. Taaffe's focus on the uneven operational performance of Army generals is a welcome corrective to the traditional criticism of the rank and file in Korea.
Nevertheless, MacArthur's Korean War Generals, no matter how admirable in intent and breadth of research, has some shortcomings. Apart from the theater staff, the generals with one exception were not Douglas MacArthur’s. The only real MacArthur choice for a command in the UNC was Major General Edward M. Almond, who came to Tokyo for...