National Memoir Writing Month on November, 2024: did douglas macarthur write a book or memoirs that has been published?
November, 2024 is National Memoir Writing Month 2024. How to write a memoir But it's also National
MacArthur, Gen Douglas (1880-1964). MacArthur began his career in the US army with an enviable military pedigree. His father retired as the army's senior general and had won a Congressional Medal of Honor during the American civil war. Commissioned from West Point as top of his year (1903) into the prestigious Engineers, he served on the staff in the Philippines, where his father had been civil and military C-in-C during the Philippines insurrection, and was later appointed ADC to Pres Theodore Roosevelt. He came to prominence as the commander of the 42nd (National Guard) Division during the closing months of WW I, having also served as the Rainbow Division's COS and a brigade commander. A brigadier general in 1918, he was an extremely influential commandant of West Point in the 1920s and by 1930 he was a full general and US army COS. That he was an extremely bright and zealous officer there is no doubt, but the key to his accelerated promotion in the inter-war years was his supreme self-confidence, spilling over into arrogance. He collected around him bright young staff officers (including Eisenhower), and courted media attention. In 1935 he returned to the Philippines and notionally retired from the US army in order to accept the post of field marshal and director of national defence in the newly created commonwealth.
With war threatening, MacArthur formally returned to US service in July 1941, but like everyone else he was caught by surprise by Pearl Harbor and simultaneous, crippling air attacks in the Philippines. In the Japanese invasion that followed, he was hampered by the inadequate spending of the 1930s on the local defence force, and the best he could manage was a delaying action while withdrawing to the Bataan peninsula. On being appointed Supreme Allied Commander South-West Pacific in February 1942, MacArthur was ordered to escape to Australia by Franklin Roosevelt and made his famous ‘I shall return’ pledge. He felt sidelined by the ‘Germany first’ priority in WW II, but employed his distinct blend of charm, flamboyance, insubordination, and contemptuous manipulation on politicians, the media, and superior officers to get his way.
It must be borne in mind that during the Pacific campaign he was not only competing for resources with the European theatre, but also with the US navy's drive across the central Pacific. From his HQ in Brisbane, MacArthur first launched a counter-offensive in New Guinea, and then embarked on an economical ‘island-hopping’ advance that bypassed areas of strong Japanese concentration such as Rabaul, leaving them to wither on the vine. In this he made good use of intelligence deriving from the blind faith of the Japanese in their Enigma machine enciphering systems. It may at first have been dictated by a shortage of troops and amphibious craft, but it was a bold strategy that paid off handsomely not only in terms of objectives achieved with minimal casualties, but also in making sure his theatre and the army in the Pacific did not become relegated to backwater consideration.
Both Nimitz and the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued, correctly, that the Philippine island chain had no strategic value and should be bypassed. But MacArthur had a promise to redeeem, a humiliation to avenge, and a paternal legacy to live up to, and his essentially political arguments trumped the military concentration of forces argument. Preceded by a swarm of photographers, he waded ashore at Leyte in October 1944 and scored a great publicity and morale victory in the USA, while the US navy was less photogenically pounding the Japanese fleet into scrap when it tried to ambush the landing. Roosevelt, who never liked him, nonetheless went with the flow and made him a five-star general of the army along with Eisenhower two months later.
Nominated Supreme Commander Allied Powers for the invasion of Japan, revenge was sweet on 2 September 1945, when he received the Japanese capitulation on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. But there was nothing petty or vindictive about his role in the resettlement and reconstruction of Japan as Allied commander of the occupation during 1945-51, when he became shogun in all but name, a role to which his autocratic nature and imperial bearing were particularly well suited.
The last, unexpected chapter in his military career came with the Korean war when, long past retirement age, he was called upon to take command of UN forces to repel the invasion of the South by the Russian and Chinese-backed North Koreans. He fought a holding action while building up forces around Pusan, then struck at the overextended North Korean lines of communication with the daring landing at Inchon. The North Korean army dissolved and he drove north, under orders to create the conditions for a unified Korea after democratic elections. He was not alone in discounting Chinese warnings, but bears the main responsibility for the fact that they managed to insert a very large army betw
How should I write my conclusion paragraph about the author Joan Didion?
Certainly, Joan Didion is one of the finest writers of literature over two centuries. From her earliest writing in 1963 to her current best seller, she has set the bar for everyone else with her wrenching insights into the heart of American culture, both contemporary and counter, and the elegance with which she describes these phenomema and the plights of people affected by them. No voice was ever stronger, no author more skilled than she.
You may get some ideas from her bio.
Didion Biography
One of the strongest voices in American letters, Joan Didion has made her mark with fiercely intelligent novels (Play It As It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer), insightful nonfiction (Salvador, Political Fictions), and screenplays co-written with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne (Panic in Needle Park, Up Close and Personal).
Born in Sacramento, Didion attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1956 with a degree in English. After college, she moved to New York to work for Vogue magazine. Recognized immediately as a talented and insightful writer, she contributed frequently to such diverse publications as Mademoiselle, Esquire, The New York Times, and National Review; and in 1963 she published her first novel, Run River. She and Dunne were wed in 1964; and for the remainder of their married life, they divided their time between New York and L.A., collaborating frequently on Hollywood scripts while developing separate and distinguished literary careers.
In December of 2003, Dunne died of a massive heart attack, while the couple's recently married daughter, Quintana Roo, lay comatose in a New York hospital. Didion spent the next year blindsided by a grief so profound it propelled her into a sort of madness. She chronicled the entire experience in The Year of Magical Thinking, a spellbinding memoir of bereavement written in the spare, elegant prose that has become a hallmark of her work. Published in 2005 (scant months after Quintana's death), this elegiac book -- Didion's most personal and affecting work to date -- became a huge bestseller. It received a National Book Award and was turned, two years later, into a successful Broadway play starring Vanessa Redgrave.
Since her 1963 debut, Didion has alternated between novels and nonfiction, proving herself a wry and astute observer of America's shifting political and cultural landscape. Written nearly a decade apart, her two essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979) are considered classics of 1960s counterculture. Moreover, the author's identity as a seventh-generation Californian has colored her writing in profoundly significant ways. For our money, no contemporary American writer has examined more deftly the unique role of "place" in everyday life.
what is the madagascar national bird and flower anthem mott and climate?
There is no National Bird of Madagascar
National Flower of Madagascar is the Pointsetta
The anthem is Ry Tanindraza nay malala which means Oh, Our Beloved Ancestral-land.
The flower is Poinciana or Flamboyant Delonix regia.
Madagascar's legal system is based on French civil law, and its provisions contain adequate protections for private property rights. Malagasy commercial law consists largely of the Code of Commerce and annexed laws, which are reportedly applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Madagascar has a written bankruptcy law, created in 1996 and currently included in the Code of Commerce. The Malagasy judicial system is slow and complex, and has a reputation of opacity and corruption. In the past, U.S. assistance has supported the development of alternative dispute resolution systems to provide more rapid, more transparent, and less costly resolution of commercial disputes.
Name, Madagascar gets its current name from Marco Polo, the fourteenth-century Italian explorer, who described an African island of untold wealth called Madeigascar in his memoirs. Polo heard about the island second-hand during his travels in Asia. Most scholars believe that he described Mogadishu, the port located in present-day Somalia. Nevertheless, Italian cartographers attached the name "Madagascar" to the island during the Renaissance.
It changed its name to Malagasy fairly recently but later changed it back.
Because of its geography, Madagascar's climate is highly variable. Generally, Madagascar has two seasons: a hot, rainy season from November to April and a cooler, dry season from May to October.
Climate, the east coast is the wettest part of the island and thus home to the island's rainforests. This area is also hit periodically by devastating tropical storms and cyclones.
The central highlands are considerably cooler and drier, and are the location of much of Madagascar's agriculture, especially rice.
The west coast is home to dry deciduous forests. Deciduous trees lose all their leaves during the 6- to 8-month dry season. - See more at: