Didn't Manchester also write "Arms of Rupp"? posted by KokuRyu at 10:44 PM on November 10 I'd read the first two books a long time ago, and they were well done enough for me to look forward to the third-- then nothing for years and years. Manchester certainly had a talent for creating pithy and memorable scenes. I even read his wartime memoir, Goodbye Darkness, equally well written, but man that guy was a real jerk in real life (among other things, I've never trusted any author who so urgently feels the need to share with me what a large penis he has-- and I'm not being metaphorical here) and many of the themes of the book disturbed me greatly since I was a young Marine at the time, and he had so many negative things to say about the Marine Corps. I guess now I can understand more of his disillusionment and anti-authoritarianism and sheer shock at the senseless slaughter of war, but then not so much. But Manchester was such a talented writer, writing about Churchill, whom I had loved since "History of the English Speaking Peoples" that I read for some reason when I was eight (!)-- a combination I couldn't turn down. I gritted my teeth for the many times when Manchester the writer tried to overshadow Churchill the subject, but held on because at the end he was a skilled author and biographer. I knew that he had died, and assumed the final volume would