by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, 2014, Henry Holt & Company, LLC, New York

This book was given to me as a gift at Christmas.  Otherwise, I probably would not have read it.  Once I had it, however, I was looking forward to learning something about Patton as I hadn’t read much about him.  I did see the movie many, many years ago and thought it was done very well.  I recall George C. Scott won the academy award for his portrayal of Patton.

Once I started reading, however, I had a very hard time staying with it.  As with the other book I had read by these guys, Killing Lincoln, the book seems to have been written for sixth graders.  Many of the footnotes provided basic information that everyone should already know.  This book’s writing was much worse than Killing Lincoln, however, and I just couldn’t read more than a couple of pages at one sitting.

Since I am not that knowledgeable on the subject matter, I can’t make any astute comments on the accuracy of the information, but it seemed to me that the authors were very harsh on their assessment of Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower’s performance in this period, giving all credit and no criticism of Patton’s actions.

In regard to the main theme of the book, only one or two chapters were actually devoted to Patton’s accident and subsequent death.  It appeared that the author’s mentioning of a few suspicious aspects of Patton’s death would be enough to raise the possibility that Patton was assassinated.  The innuendo that Wild Bill Donovan had something to do with it doesn’t seem to square with what I have read in other books about Donovan.

I think that O’Reilly and Dugard have found a means of generating huge amounts of revenue through some rather shoddy writing and research.  This book is a continuation of that process.