07-28-2015, 11:52 PM
I'm reading Killing Patton. My dad grew up during WWII times so he absolutely worships Patton to this day. He's the person who recommended me the book. Although, unlike my dad, ever since I started reading this book, I have learned mostly just one thing about General Patton, and that thing is this: that man was, by any modern standard, a cruel and vicious psychopath. When confronted with one of his own soldiers crying--a man stricken with shell shock after watching his best friend die in his arms--Patton beat the poor boy while yelling at him for being cowardly. This was not an isolated incident, rather, it was more or less a pattern of aggressive and neurotic behavior that peppered his whole career. The man was very clearly mentally unstable to any modern eye.
The bulk of the book consists of stories about Patton and his life, with occasional highlights of his men and their actions. The whole thing is also interspersed with a few interesting bits of conspiracy theory. I'm not a tinfoil hatter, but I do love to read about these kinds of things, don't you? Especially when they're as well put-together as.the one presented here. Since it's spoiled in the first chapter, I'll go ahead and share that the basic outline of the conspiracy is this: knowing that Patton planned to run for president after the war, and knowing that the American people loved him, and knowing that everyone's hero was secretly a dangerous, crazy ass, the powers that be arranged a little car accident, and when that didn't do the trick, they had him poisoned to death in his hospital bed. There's no conclusive evidence that such a thing actually happened, but there also isn't any proof that it didn't happen, and with the way it's all presented, it can certainly seem like a fair thing to choose to believe at times. Of course, this is true of any conspiracy story worth its salt. As an added bonus, since it's an alleged political conspiracy (rather than a "supernatural" or "alien" one), there's a much higher chance that it actually happened--and even though it's still a fairly slim chance, if you don't think that even the possibility of this level of intrigue happening in the real world and being carried out by high-profile people of their time in broad daylight is the tightest shit... then I really can't help you understand the feeling. :iiam:
Although I have to say, it's no wonder that (if it's all true) they decided to kill him, since all of the other parts of the book are drawn directly from our own historical record. Hell, if it's al true, I for one am glad they decided to take him out before he could run for president. With a temperament like his, we'd have been plunged us into nuclear chaos with the USSR over something as minor as a spilled cup of coffee!
I'm actually pleasantly surprised that the author (who I'm really not a fan of, as a general rule,) managed to dial back his TV persona a good bit for this one. It's not the most elegant or loquacious of prose, but the stories about Patton, his men, and their exploits are very consistently entertaining, and you can even pick up more than a few real, actual historical facts along the way, if you're into that kind of thing.
If you're not bothered by simplistic (albeit not necessarily "bad") prose, there were only a couple real downfalls.
First, O'Reilly wasn't as honest as he could have been about Patton's antisocial and occasionally downright disturbing behavior--my own research revealed that the man was a notorious anti-Semite, and mistreated former Holocaust prisoners, but it's hard to find anything about that in this book. Although honestly, I kind of understand the decision not to include this, since the reader is presumably supposed to like the polished-up turd of a human being that is George S. Patton, and even a few paragraphs' mention of the man's rampant hate-boner for Der Juden would've probably killed a lot of the advance hype for the book. O'Reilly likely failed to include such information on purpose, because he felt it would be bad for business--not to mention his own image--to endorse somebody who hated hard on the Jews. Really, if you're not brainwashed into thinking that Patton's awesome because you're a septuagenarian and you were raised to think he's awesome, or because you saw the movie "Patton" that one time, or something like that... it's really already hard enough to like him by the book's end. Of course, I admit that this is mostly conjecture on my part. His motives are ultimately unknown for us all. Still, if he wanted to paint a good portrait of the man, he should've been more honest about his less pleasant side.
The second big downfall is that the book often leaves the main Patton narrative entirely to explain some tangential factoid or event that is usually somehow related to the story, but not essential information. In other words, it's a good kind of padding for a book like this--especially if you don't know much about the WWII era--but it's padding nonetheless.
Still, I highly recommend it for anybody who, like me, is a fan of stories that like to look between the lines of fact and fiction and then ask, "what if"?
Rather than having to buy it, I was lucky enough to check it out from my local library for a whopping $0.00; if you share my dislike of O'Reilly's manner or have a burning hatred of his politics, then I'd advise you to follow suit. If you don't have anything against "wild" Bill O'Reilly? I'm not sure what price seems fair to you, but yeah, I think it's worth some money.
The bulk of the book consists of stories about Patton and his life, with occasional highlights of his men and their actions. The whole thing is also interspersed with a few interesting bits of conspiracy theory. I'm not a tinfoil hatter, but I do love to read about these kinds of things, don't you? Especially when they're as well put-together as.the one presented here. Since it's spoiled in the first chapter, I'll go ahead and share that the basic outline of the conspiracy is this: knowing that Patton planned to run for president after the war, and knowing that the American people loved him, and knowing that everyone's hero was secretly a dangerous, crazy ass, the powers that be arranged a little car accident, and when that didn't do the trick, they had him poisoned to death in his hospital bed. There's no conclusive evidence that such a thing actually happened, but there also isn't any proof that it didn't happen, and with the way it's all presented, it can certainly seem like a fair thing to choose to believe at times. Of course, this is true of any conspiracy story worth its salt. As an added bonus, since it's an alleged political conspiracy (rather than a "supernatural" or "alien" one), there's a much higher chance that it actually happened--and even though it's still a fairly slim chance, if you don't think that even the possibility of this level of intrigue happening in the real world and being carried out by high-profile people of their time in broad daylight is the tightest shit... then I really can't help you understand the feeling. :iiam:
Although I have to say, it's no wonder that (if it's all true) they decided to kill him, since all of the other parts of the book are drawn directly from our own historical record. Hell, if it's al true, I for one am glad they decided to take him out before he could run for president. With a temperament like his, we'd have been plunged us into nuclear chaos with the USSR over something as minor as a spilled cup of coffee!
I'm actually pleasantly surprised that the author (who I'm really not a fan of, as a general rule,) managed to dial back his TV persona a good bit for this one. It's not the most elegant or loquacious of prose, but the stories about Patton, his men, and their exploits are very consistently entertaining, and you can even pick up more than a few real, actual historical facts along the way, if you're into that kind of thing.
If you're not bothered by simplistic (albeit not necessarily "bad") prose, there were only a couple real downfalls.
First, O'Reilly wasn't as honest as he could have been about Patton's antisocial and occasionally downright disturbing behavior--my own research revealed that the man was a notorious anti-Semite, and mistreated former Holocaust prisoners, but it's hard to find anything about that in this book. Although honestly, I kind of understand the decision not to include this, since the reader is presumably supposed to like the polished-up turd of a human being that is George S. Patton, and even a few paragraphs' mention of the man's rampant hate-boner for Der Juden would've probably killed a lot of the advance hype for the book. O'Reilly likely failed to include such information on purpose, because he felt it would be bad for business--not to mention his own image--to endorse somebody who hated hard on the Jews. Really, if you're not brainwashed into thinking that Patton's awesome because you're a septuagenarian and you were raised to think he's awesome, or because you saw the movie "Patton" that one time, or something like that... it's really already hard enough to like him by the book's end. Of course, I admit that this is mostly conjecture on my part. His motives are ultimately unknown for us all. Still, if he wanted to paint a good portrait of the man, he should've been more honest about his less pleasant side.
The second big downfall is that the book often leaves the main Patton narrative entirely to explain some tangential factoid or event that is usually somehow related to the story, but not essential information. In other words, it's a good kind of padding for a book like this--especially if you don't know much about the WWII era--but it's padding nonetheless.
Still, I highly recommend it for anybody who, like me, is a fan of stories that like to look between the lines of fact and fiction and then ask, "what if"?
Rather than having to buy it, I was lucky enough to check it out from my local library for a whopping $0.00; if you share my dislike of O'Reilly's manner or have a burning hatred of his politics, then I'd advise you to follow suit. If you don't have anything against "wild" Bill O'Reilly? I'm not sure what price seems fair to you, but yeah, I think it's worth some money.