... a lover not of war but of war stories, the grit and stink of combat, be it military, political, bureaucratic or some combination thereof.

... an outsize but fascinating epic directed simultaneously to battle buffs and pacifists, history enthusiasts and political moralists. With sometimes numbing detail and elegant maps, it evokes the nobility and crazy heroism of outnumbered American grunts in a dozen of the war’s critical engagements, cinematic scenes that alternate with crisp essays about the mindless way the war began, the reckless way it was managed and the fruitless way it ended.

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MacArthur ordered the swift conquest of all North Korea, confident that the Chinese would not dare challenge him. But hundreds of thousands of Chinese lay in wait to spring American history’s greatest ambush. Halberstam writes: “The bet had been called, and other men would now have to pay for that terrible arrogance and vainglory.”

Yet again the Americans were routed, and MacArthur’s obsessive reaction was to agitate for total war against China, nuclear if necessary. He had to be fired by Truman in April 1951 so that more sober generals could settle for “a grinding, limited war” that asked men to “die for a tie,” a stalemate that eventually restored the original border between the Koreas.