From the Jaws of Victory

by Charles M. Fair

s/t: A History of the Character, Causes & Consequences of Military Stupidity, from Crassus to Johnson & Westmoreland
This book continues the study of "the consequences of stupidity in high places" by examining the highly developed & hitherto unstudied tradition of military incompetence. With iconoclastic wit & great, if unconventional, erudition, Charles M. Fair elucidates the principles of military defeat through a highly entertaining series of portraits of its greatest practitioners.

Genres: History, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, Military History

445 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 1971

About the author

Charles Maitland Fair was an American neuroscience researcher and writer. Fair was born in New York City. His mother was the stage actress Gertrude Bryan. He attended the Buckley School, Fay School, and St. Paul's. Fair attended Yale University but was asked to leave before graduating.

Fair began to study the nervous system in the late 1950's out of his conviction that psychiatric theories of the Human mind had failed. In spite of his lack of a college degree, Fair distinguished himself as an independent scholar by holding several prestigious positions and writing three books on neuroscience. He was a Guggenheim Fellow at UCLA's Brain Research Institute and worked as a scientist for MIT's Neuroscience Research Program and Massachusetts General Hospital. Fair published several technical papers and contributed to the academic journals "Science" and "Nature".

Fair wrote poetry, literary commentary, and screenplays. He published light verse in "Punch" and "The New Yorker", wrote book reviews for the "Providence Journal" and the "Washington Post", and had a column in the "American Poetry Review". Fair wrote and narrated the soundtrack for the original Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. He wrote three non-technical books on the subjects of the history of war ("From the Jaws of Victory") and cultural criticism ("The Dying Self; The New Nonsense: The End of the Rational Consensus").

Fair had a diverse range of occupations and interests. He worked as a jazz pianist, banana importer, computer company executive, editor, poet, writer, neuroscientist, and historian. He enjoyed sailing and played the vibraphone.

"By doing a great many things and failing at half of them I found out who I really am, and something about what the world is really like," said Fair of his own life.

Charles Fair passed away on July 28th, 2014 from lymphoma. He was 97 at the time of his death.

Reviews

[Charles van Buren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding examination of military blunders, incompetence, arrogance and just plain stupidity. This book really shines up until World War One where Mr. Fair presents an adequate but unoriginal and incomplete account. For World War Two, he concentrates on Hitler's relationship with his generals and pretty much neglects everything and everyone else. He should have had a field day with Vietnam, LBJ, McNamara and Westmoreland but, for some reason, did not really fully explore the blunders, chicanery and arrogance.

He devotes an entire, lively, entertaining chapter to Union General Ambrose Burnside. "A man so versatile in his stupidity as to defy categorization." The title of the.book comes from Abraham Lincoln's response after receiving news of the Battle of the Crater, "Only Burnside could have achieved this. One last great defeat snatched from the jaws of victory."

Another great chapter is The Tiny Lion vs. The Enormous Mouse, the account of Charles XII of Sweden's war against Peter the Great of Russia. Charles won nearly every battle but lost the war. He did make a lasting impression on Peter. After receiving news of Charles' death, Peter seems to have needed assurance from those around him that Charles was indeed dead.

This book had a profound impact on my understanding of the world when I first read it in college. I find that it still resonates, entertains and informs.

I would rate it five stars if Mr. Fair had stopped with the 19th century but he didn't and the 20th century chapters are inferior to the rest. So only four stars.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Fair’s From the Jaws of Victory is the classic book on military incompetence. Fair uses an historical framework to analyze military failure through a variety of perspectives and causes from Rome through 1971, focusing on specific leaders where appropriate. He finds common ground among most of the generals examined: overconfidence in their abilities, underestimation of the enemy, technological disparity between foes, outmoded tactics, stubbornness (”the dull man’s substitute for resolution”), and most commonly hubris. Fair's lively prose and sharp analyses make for an engrossing read. Older examples provide Fair's best work, when the line between statesman and general wasn’t so easily blurred: Marcus Licinius Crassus, the vainglorious Roman general who destroyed his army in a pointless war with Parthia; Phillip II and the Spanish Armada, a combination of grandiose egomania and religious certainty that any cause, no matter how improbable and ill-considered, could succeed with enough faith; and most especially the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden, where Charles XII’s gallant but ill-advised leadership destroyed his army and led to Sweden’s eclipse as a major power. Fair’s lively chapter on America’s signature incompetent, Civil War general Ambrose Burnside, alone justifies reading the book. Fair's coverage of more recent conflicts, especially the World Wars and Vietnam, is less engaging and generally more polemical; there are also debatable chapters such as the one deeming Napoleon Bonaparte a bad general (for fighting grandiose wars of conquest that were ultimately unwinnable). Similarly, Fair’s final plea for pacifism is heavy-handed and obvious. Still this book remains the best of its type, comparing favorably to Norman Dixon's clinical dryness and Geoffrey Regan's shallow self-recycling.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, often funny, sometimes angry and passionate. The author looks at a representative sampling of blundering military leaders from different eras from the Persian empire through Vietnam (it was published in 1971), and goes beyond describing what they did wrong to examine their thinking and personalities. This book is potentially very useful to anyone who is planning or carrying out military actions, whether in real life or in a game, as a source of warnings and signs that one is slipping into any of these patterns.
Reading his analysis of Vietnam in particular, I was struck by how much of what he said about Johnson and Westmoreland and their conduct of the war, and the results, applies closely to the Iraq war up through last year (2008).

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book covering great historical defeats that really shouldn't have happened. Battles that should have been won before they began, but tactical mistakes were made by the superior force. It is a very interesting read for the student of military history.

[Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book deals with failures of generals. Parts on Ambrose Burnside, Gallipoli, Vietnam, Crassus, and German actions in WW2 have merit.

[Leonard · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that discuses some of the worst generals in history. The book gives a lot of opinions, mostly supported by facts. The authors tone seems to say more about him and his times (written toward the end of the Vietnam War) than about some of the generals he discusses. He labels some of histories greatest generals (such as Napoleon) as stupid.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing, but neither very deep nor very reflective, accounts of military stupidity.