Monty: The Battles Of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

From Library JournalA condensation of Hamilton's previous three-volume biography of Montgomery -Monty: The Making of a General (LJ 9/15/81), Master of the Battlefield (LJ 1/84), and Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal (LJ 12/86)-this latest effort will be more accessible to the average American reader. Sympathetic to Montgomery, while recognizing his personality flaws and peculiarities, this title provides a view of Montgomery that may be unfamiliar in the United States-that of a dedicated professional soldier and ally baffled by the perceived weakness and amateurism of U.S. political and military leaders during World War II. Arrogant, vain, and caustic, Montgomery remains one of the least-understood, yet most successful, Allied military figures of the war. Hamilton's book can serve to provide an alternative view to the usual Eisenhower-oriented materials and should be considered for World War II collections.---Stanley Planton, Quinn Lib, Univ.ChillicotheCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.Nigel Hamilton's award-winning Monty trilogy was hailed in both Britain and the United States as an extraordinary achievement, "magisterial in its shape and scope, brilliantly woven, and a joy to read."Now, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day landings and the campaign to defeat Germany that followed, Nigel Hamilton has revised and condensed his official biography of Field Marshal Montgomery into a single volume: Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Based on personal diaries, wartime signals, notes, and letters as well as interviews with Montgomery's closest family, friends, colleagues, and subordinates and access to tens of thousands of unpublished documents in the United States and Great Britain, this is the closest any writer has ever penetrated to the heart and soul of the man who commanded the Anglo-American armies on D-Day and became known the world over simply as "Monty."A tortured, vengeful man, whose artist wife died in heartbreaking circumstances two years before World War II, Monty knew but one ambition: to prove himself as military teacher and commander.In the course of this authoritative narrative, we see Monty both at his best and at his worst: brilliant and boastful, compassionate and cruel, farsighted and yet sometimes petty and obnoxious. It is a mesmerizing portrait not only of great leadership but also of the trials of war and coalition tensions, as, after Alamein, British and American generals jostle for their place in the Allied sun. Monty's sheer professionalism awes us - as does his arrogance and conceit. A hero to his troops, he becomes a thorn in the side of his allies and superiors, reducing Eisenhower to the point of resignation as Supreme Commander and Churchill to despair.Yet this is, too, the inside story of World War II as it was waged on the field, with Monty battling not only against the Germans in north Africa, Sicily, Italy, and northwest Europe, but also with an Allied high command he considered to be an amateur and out of touch. Never before has the story of the planning and execution of the D-Day landings been so candidly told, nor that of the Normandy campaign, the tragedy at Arnhem, the shocking defeat in the Ardennes, and the inside account of the Allied failure to seize Berlin while it was within our grasp.Vivid, colorful, told with a wonderful eye for human frailty as well as genius, this is the definitive life of what the Times of London called "the last great battlefield commander."From Publishers WeeklyDespite grave character flaws (he was vain, arrogant, small-minded and vengeful) Montgomery was, according to Hamilton, the outstanding Allied battlefield commander of WW II. Hamilton ( JFK: Reckless Youth ) has condensed his three-volume official biography into this single, more accessible book for general readers, concentrating both on Montgomery's battlefield exploits and his thorny relationships with American g