George C. Scott’s magnificent performance in the 1970 film “Patton” triggered a generation of interest and scholarship in this fascinating hero of the Second World War. In this Claremont Review of Books review of a new biography of Patton, Victor Davis Hanson provides an interesting and valuable overview of the previous biographies of General Patton. My brother Matt — who reads everything on General Patton — prefers Carlo D’Este’s “Patton: a Genius for War,” of which VDH writes:

In fact, we owe D’Este a great deal for his evenhandedness: although an Omar Bradley or Eisenhower might better appeal to his own sense of decorum, D’Este was too much the scholar not to see that beneath Patton’s repugnant crudity there was both talent and, in the end, humanity?and a tactical genius that simply overshadowed Eisenhower’s and Bradley’s combined.

Read the entire review for an interesting analysis of one of America’s great generals of the 20th century.