{"id":1737,"date":"2015-05-28T08:42:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T14:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1737"},"modified":"2026-04-01T20:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T02:04:28","slug":"killing-patton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1737","title":{"rendered":"Killing Patton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>by Bill O&#8217;Reilly and Martin Dugard, 2014, Henry Holt &amp; Company, LLC, New York<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This book was given to me as a gift at Christmas.\u00a0 Otherwise, I probably would not have read it.\u00a0 Once I had it, however, I was looking forward to learning something about Patton as I hadn&#8217;t read much about him. I did see the movie many, many years ago and thought it was done very well.\u00a0 I recall George C. Scott won the academy award for his portrayal of Patton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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, <em>Killing Lincoln<\/em>, the book seems to have been written for sixth graders. Many of the footnotes provided basic information that everyone should already know.\u00a0 This book&#8217;s writing was much worse than <em>Killing Lincoln<\/em>, however, and I just couldn&#8217;t read more than a couple of pages at one sitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since I am not that knowledgeable on the subject matter, I can&#8217;t\u00a0make 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&#8217;s performance in this period, giving all credit and no criticism of Patton&#8217;s actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In regard to the main theme of the book, only one or two chapters were actually devoted to Patton&#8217;s accident and subsequent death. It appeared that the author&#8217;s mentioning of a few suspicious aspects of Patton&#8217;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&#8217;t seem to square with what I have read in other books about Donovan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that O&#8217;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. <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"wp_delimgbtn\" title=\"2 stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-2-0.gif\" alt=\"2 stars\"\/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Bill O&#8217;Reilly and Martin Dugard, 2014, Henry Holt &amp; Company, LLC, New York This book was given to me as a gift at Christmas.\u00a0 Otherwise, I probably would not have read it.\u00a0 Once I had it, however, I was <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1737\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,21],"class_list":["post-1737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-history","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1737"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4084,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions\/4084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}