Author takes a fascinating story and dries it out into a less-than-stimulating biography. General Butler deserves better than this

If you like this book, you'll love The Plot to Seize the White House, which just came out from Skyhorse Publishing. General Smedley Butler is an amazing character.

If you like this book, you'll love The Plot to Seize the White House, which just came out from Skyhorse Publishing. General Smedley Butler is an amazing character.

If you are interested in Smedley Butler, don't miss the book The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer.

anyone who questions the validity of going to war needs to read this book.

Smedley Butler was a great American, a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, a General in the Marine Corps, and, in retirement, an articulate and famous pacifist, who could not be dismissed effiminate or ignorant. His life is worth examining, particulary for anyone in the military.

Butler was also a skein of contradictions: a Marine from a Quaker family, a general who signed up as a private, a critic of politics in the military whose congressman father just happened to oversee the department of the Navy, a soldier who spent most of his days maintaining order in America's colonies, official and otherwise, who went to to condemn the deployment of American troops overseas, perhaps most importantly, a soldier who inspired fierce loyalty. The list could go on and on.

Unfortunately this biography reads like a police report and not like a measured and analytical examination of a truly fascinating American. Butler was a great man who deserved a much better biography. (Un)fortunately historians who write popular political hagiographies eschew the lives of quixotic Marines, however noble they may have been.

As there are not that many biographies of Butler out there, this one may be worth reading for the facts, but do not expect greatness from this book.