Return To Glory: The Untold Story Of Honor, Dishonor & Triumph At The United States Military Academy, 1950-53

by Bill McWilliams

Now the basis for the made-for-television ESPN Original Entertainment movie "Codebreakers", A Return to Glory is the first book to bring readers behind closed doors at West Point during the unprecedented, widely controversial, tragic cheating episode of 1951.

Told with great precision and keen insight, A Return to Glory fuses the intertwined struggles for officers and cadets to maintain honorable conduct on the athletic field with the challenges to officers and enlisted men on the battlefields of Korea, the Cold War's first frustrating and deadly "limited war." The parallels and corollaries are astounding and often profound.

The book also tells one of the great, never-before-told collegiate football stories of the twentieth century, namely the inspiring true story of how the vaunted Army football team—nationally dominant during much of the decade preceding the incident—recovered from losing almost 40 players in the devastating cheating scandal of 1951.

Timeless and compelling, A Return to Glory is as surprising and meaningful for today's readers as it will be for those who lived the events of a half century ago. Both a period history and lively true story, the book tells of authentic and unsung heroes and young men attempting to live up to the extraordinarily high standards demanded by the Academy and its Honor Code.

While the work accurately portrays the joys, rewards, and tragedies of life in the military, it also tells thought-provoking, often humorous, uplifting stories about people and institutions, "warts and all," woven into a larger story and theme, with deliberately broad appeal intended to reach the general public.

Most importantly, in a new age of desperate battles that challenge the integrity of military leaders on and off today's battlefields, A Return to Glory tells the inspirational story of some of their Army forebears who selflessly chose the harder right over the easier wrong...and prevailed.

Genres: Military Fiction

1118 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

Bill McWilliams was born in Brownsville, TX, raised in small towns in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado and received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, from the third congressional district of Colorado. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree, and earned a Master of Science degree in Business Administration from The George Washington University while attending the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, AL. He later attended the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA, where he completed ten months of senior management training.

His writing includes two prior major Korean War histories, A Return to Glory: The Untold Story of Honor, Dishonor, and Triumph at the United States Military Academy, 1950-53; and On Hallowed Ground, The Last Battle for Pork Chop Hill, the latter published in hardback and trade paperback; plus numerous articles, including two-part and five-part series in newspapers and magazines. An ESPN made-for-television movie, "Code Breakers," premiered in December 2005 and subsequently released on CD in July 2006, was based on his first book.

Reviews

[Kate Doolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb account of West Point in the 1950s particularly detailed and thoroughly entertaining...