Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointing Perspective of Scott
Review: This rather wooden biography of Scott does not begin to cover in any details the complexity of this man and the times he lived in. As a military historian, Eisenhower seems to gloss over much of Scott's battlefield tactics. This is surprising. His description of the battle of Lundy's Lane, argueably the bloodiest encounter in the War of 1812, is given scant attention here. At this battle, Scott pioneered using a French Napoleanic colume to attack the British position on the bluff above the town. Scott tried this attack hours after the battle had been raging, and long after his own brigade had been shot to pieces by the British. His attack again failed, the British vollies ripping into his column, but the event marked Scott as an important tactical innovator in the fledgling US army. None of this is mentioned in Eisnhower's account of the battle. The remaining portion of this book moves at a snail's pace. Eisenhower's prose is not inspiring, and at times clumsy. Too much time is spent on Scott's petty intrigues with US Presidents and rival generals. In the course of which we learn little of his domestic life, and even less about Winfield Scott, the man. Scott was a brilliant, but arrogant, elistest individual. He envisioned himself as to the manor born, and wanted nothing better than to be a european aristocrat. Eisenhower gives us very little of this perspective. The narrative picks up a little for the Mexcian War chapters as the author has already published a book on this topic. Still, this biography is weak overall. For the length it spans, some 400 pages, the reader does not emerge with a great understanding of Winfield Scott. I would recommed a far better bio done recently by Timothy Johnson which is available from Amazon.com. A comparative reading of this work will show the reader where this book is lacking. Since there are so few biographies on Scott out there, anything is better than nothing, but the reader will not get any great insight into Scott as the guiding genius behind the creation of the modern US army from reading this work alone.
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