"Volume 1 of Kevin Hymel's Patton's War gives us something we badly needed: a contemporary view of George Patton's career as a World War II combat commander. This first volume follows the General from the beach at Fedala, Morocco on the first day of Operation TORCH, to his triumph at El Guettar in Tunisia 146 days later. The book then follows Patton during the Sicily Campaign: from Gela to Palermo and onward to the slapping incidents that brought on his intermission as a battlefield commander. Volume 1 concludes with D-Day and the Dawn of the U.S. Third Army. The pacing of George Patton's career during the Second World War coincidentally follows the ups and downs of perfect screenplay form, so the subject is already readable. Kevin Hymel's thorough command of the literature and historiography of Patton's life and career is an exceptional compliment to that natural structure.

But this is no hagiography: Hymel gives us the arrogant Patton who was frequently guilty of racial condescension and had a penchant for berating soldiers as much as he gives us the redemptive Patton who survived his errors and misjudgments to become an American legend. This is precisely the kind of brutal honesty that the subject deserves and Kevin Hymel is clearly the right historian to introduce Patton to the 21st Century."-- Martin Morgan , author of The Americans on D-Day: A Photographic History of the Normandy Invasion.