Good example of the writer matching the subject: both Manchester and MacArthur revel in the same "appeals to timeless values" the rest of us are more likely to call purple prose.

As a biography, this is excellent—probably too supportive of the subject (like most loving biographers) but still a great read. To his credit, though, Manchester is careful to note MacArthur's contradictions and failures, though leavened by debunking the overblown criticisms that naturally accumulate around any public figure.

It's somewhat lost in the hundreds of pages of particulars, but my overwhelming impression of MacArthur is of someone who deliberately stayed overseas from 1937-1951, largely to avoid situations where he wasn't the most important and assured person in the room. He built his own imperial bubble where he was the irreplaceable man, and his own impulses became unrestricted. In some cases, like postwar Japan, this could be a good thing—but only by chance, since there weren't enough checks to keep him in line. He rose to prominence on daring chances as a lucky man, only to find in Korea what happens when the luck runs out.