Pershing A Biography

The riveting story of General "Black Jack" Pershing, the first great modern commander to lead a major campaign in Europe. In this persuasive biography, Jim Lacey sheds light on General Pershing's legacy as the nation's first modern combat commander, setting the standard for today's four-star officers. When the U.S. entered into WWI in 1917, they did so with inadequate forces. In just over a year, Pershing built and hurled a one million man army against forty battle-hardened German divisions, defending the hellish Meuse-Argonne and turning the tide of the war. With focus and clarity, Lacey traces the development of Pershing from Indian fighter, to guerrilla warrior against the Philippines insurgency to victorious commander in WWI.

This is the authoritative biography on General of the Armies John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing (1860-1948), a senior United States Army officer during World War I. His most famous post was serving as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front from 1917-1918. In John J. Pershing: General of the Armies, author Frederick Palmer focuses primarily on General Pershing’s experiences as Commander of the AEF of the First World War. Here is a biography, history and a tribute to a great general, written by a World War I correspondent who served on his staff. Palmer traces his background, his boyhood in Missouri, his switch from law to West Point, later taking law and teaching at the University of Nebraska, fighting Indians, and Moros, serving in the Spanish-American War, the troubles in Mexico, and his promotion to Brigadier-General. Then the First World War, in minute detail—battles, campaigns, offensives, planning and strategy; conferences with other war leaders; insistence on high stands of discipline and morale; determination on separate American troops; his vision, insight, and gift for organization. An invaluable addition to any WWI library!

The Story of General Pershing by Everett T. Tomlinson is a detailed biography of General of the Armies John Joseph Pershing GCB. Nicknamed "Black Jack", General Pershing was a senior United States Army officer. He served most famously as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front during World War I, from 1917 to 1918. In addition to leading the AEF to victory in World War I, Pershing notably served as a mentor to many in the generation of generals who led the United States Army during World War II, including George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Lesley J. McNair, George S. Patton, and Douglas MacArthur.

The president of the United States traditionally serves as a symbol of power, virtue, ability, dominance, popularity, and patriarchy. In recent years, however, the high-profile candidacies of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachmann have provoked new interest in gendered popular culture and how it influences Americans' perceptions of the country's highest political office. In this timely volume, editors Justin S. Vaughn and Lilly J. Goren lead a team of scholars in examining how the president and the first lady exist as a function of public expectations and cultural gender roles. The authors investigate how the candidates' messages are conveyed, altered, and interpreted in "hard" and "soft" media forums, from the nightly news to daytime talk shows, and from tabloids to the blogosphere. They also address the portrayal of the presidency in film and television productions such as Kisses for My President (1964), Air Force One (1997), and Commander in Chief (2005). With its strong, multidisciplinary approach, Women and the White House commences a wider discussion about the possibility of a female president in the United States, the ways in which popular perceptions of gender will impact her leadership, and the cultural challenges she will face.

This National Book Award finalist traces the life of the general whose career began on the western frontier and culminated with victory in a world war. Using both domestic and foreign sources, many heretofore untapped, Frank Vandiver focuses on the qualities of and challenges to Pershing the soldier without losing sight of the man who wore the uniform. Vandiver gives special attention to Pershing's stint as head of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, his fourteen years' service in the Far East, and his unusual role as manager-organizer of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Here is a full-bodied portrait of a remarkable American, plus new insights into American and international military history, and a fresh view of the United States' rise to power.

From the New York Times bestselling author of War Letters and Behind the Lines, Andrew Carroll’s My Fellow Soldiers draws on a rich trove of both little-known and newly uncovered letters and diaries to create a marvelously vivid and moving account of the American experience in World War I, with General John Pershing featured prominently in the foreground. Andrew Carroll’s intimate portrait of General Pershing, who led all of the American troops in Europe during World War I, is a revelation. Given a military force that on the eve of its entry into the war was downright primitive compared to the European combatants, the general surmounted enormous obstacles to build an army and ultimately command millions of U.S. soldiers. But Pershing himself—often perceived as a harsh, humorless, and wooden leader—concealed inner agony from those around him: almost two years before the United States entered the war, Pershing suffered a personal tragedy so catastrophic that he almost went insane with grief and remained haunted by the loss for the rest of his life, as private and previously unpublished letters he wrote to family members now reveal. Before leaving for Europe, Pershing also had a passionate romance with George Patton’s sister, Anne. But once he was in France, Pershing fell madly in love with a young painter named Micheline Resco, whom he later married in secret. Woven throughout Pershing’s story are the experiences of a remarkable group of American men and women, both the famous and unheralded, including Harry Truman, Douglas Macarthur, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Teddy Roosevelt, and his youngest son Quentin. The chorus of these voices, which begins with the first Americans who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion 1914 as well as those who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, make the high stakes of this epic American saga piercingly real and demonstrates the war’s profound impact on the individuals who served—during and in the years after the conflict—with extraordinary humanity and emotional force.

The riveting story of General "Black Jack" Pershing, the first great modern commander to lead a major campaign in Europe. This persuasive biography sheds light on the nation's first modern combat commander who set the standard for today's four-star officers. Though the U.S. entered WWI with inadequate forces, in just over a year Pershing had built and hurled a one million man army against forty battle-hardened German divisions, defending the hellish Meuse-Argonne and turning the tide of the war. With focus and clarity, Lacey traces the development of Pershing from Indian fighter, to warrior against the Philippines insurgency, to victorious commander in WWI.

Few American military figures are more revered than General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing (1860--1948), who is most famous for leading the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. The only soldier besides George Washington to be promoted to the highest rank in the U.S. Army (General of the Armies), Pershing was a mentor to the generation of generals who led America's forces during the Second World War. Though Pershing published a two-volume memoir, My Experiences in the World War, and has been the subject of numerous biographies, few know that he spent many years drafting a memoir of his experiences prior to the First World War. In My Life Before the World War, 1860--1917, John T. Greenwood rescues this vital resource from obscurity, making Pershing's valuable insights into key events in history widely available for the first time. Pershing performed frontier duty against the Apaches and Sioux from 1886--1891, fought in Cuba in 1898, served three tours of duty in the Philippines, and was an observer with the Japanese Army in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War. He also commanded the Mexican Punitive Expedition to capture Pancho Villa in 1916--1917. My Life Before the World War provides a rich personal account of events, people, and places as told by an observer at the center of the action. Carefully edited and annotated, this memoir is a significant contribution to our understanding of a legendary American soldier and the historic events in which he participated.