But he was one of the great fighting commanders of WWII. Ever heard of him? Nobody else has either.

The book is Defeat Into Victory by Field Marshal Viscount William Slim. But every page has some powerful insight for us writers and artists if we’ve got the patience to stick with it. Reading it is like hacking a trail through elephant grass. The book has been reissued several times since.I’m reading a book I love but that I would not recommend to anyone unless they’re as crazy as I am. In The New York Times, the writer John Masters called it 'a dramatic story with one principal character and several hundred subordinate characters', and said that it showed that Field Marshal Slim was 'an expert soldier and an expert writer.' Defeat into Victory was also a considerable commercial success, with the first edition of 20,000 selling out almost immediately, being quickly followed by a second run.

Louis Morton, writing in The Journal of Modern History, considered it a work of 'wisdom, modesty, grace, and deep understanding', and 'an outstanding example of the best of British military memoirs'. In a review in Military Affairs, Frank Trager describes it as 'extraordinary' and making 'a most valuable contribution to our understanding', and thought it instructive in the light of contemporary American involvement in Vietnam. The 1961 edition condensed the content of the original publication into one book, but followed the same structure.ĭefeat into Victory received positive reviews on its publications, being praised for its insight and the quality of writing. This structure, examining the Allied victory in terms of the resurrection of the British and Indian Armies' fighting prowess, has proved influential in the historiography of the Burma campaign. In the original 1956 edition, Slim divided his work chronologically into six 'books' entitled: Defeat into Victory is widely regarded as a classic memoir of high command. Slim was the commander of the British 14th Army, which, in concert with American and Chinese forces, defeated the Imperial Japanese Army during the Burma Campaign.

It was published in the United States as Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1942–1945 by David McKay of New York in 1961. Defeat into Victory is an account of the retaking of Burma by Allied forces during the Second World War by the British Field Marshal William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, and published in the UK by Cassell in 1956.

Slim defeat into victory