Utilizing untapped archival materials in both the United States and England, government documents, family papers, and oral histories, Stanley P. Hirshson creates the most balanced portrait of Patton ever written. It reveals Patton as a complex soldier capable of brilliant military maneuvers but also of inspiring atrocities with his fiery speeches and disputes the usual interpretation of Patton's relief from command of the Third Army.

Patton emerges as a soldier of great imagination and courage, and his military campaigns make for edge-of-the-seat reading.