George Patton adored reading about himself in the pages of history. He believed, in other words, in reincarnation. He had marched with Caesar’s legions and had advanced across Europe with Napoleon’s armies. How else to explain his insatiable appetite for glory? Soldiering was the only profession he thought suitable for a soul so steeped in the annals of warfare.

Although Patton was born and raised in California, he regarded himself as a Southern gentleman, proud scion of Pattons that had fought in the Civil War (many on the Confederate side). Like his forebears, he trained at the Virginia Military Institute before moving on to West Point.

Before World War I, Patton served as a cavalryman – to an aristocrat on whom the Army bestowed the unique title “Master of the Sword,” no other choice seemed possible. A world-class fencer, he single-handedly exchanged the Army’s slashing technique and its curved sword for the European method of driving forward with a straight-pointed weapon. The Patton sword remains the Army standard.

Patton read the classics and Sir Walter Scott, seeking fame through martial valor just like Scott’s Quentin Durward – never seeming to grasp Scott’s point that the age of chivalry was over. Or rather, Patton did not mind the idea that his pretensions were preposterous. He aimed to perpetuate the warrior myth, even posing before mirrors to perfect his military face. No actor – not even George C. Scott – could out-Patton Patton.

But Patton, for all his antique classicism, was a modern man. Early on, he saw the potential of the tank, which would superannuate his beloved horses, making warfare far more mobile while reducing casualties and maintaining the momentum of attack. Both Dennis Showalter in “Patton and Rommel” (2005) and now Alan Axelrod in “Patton: A Biography” (Palgrave MacMillan, 224 pages, $21.95) suggest that, political considerations aside, Patton could have reached Berlin as early as November 1944.The Red Army simply could not match the equipment or the tactical daring of the one American general the German military unanimously saw as their equal.

Nowhere in his brief new biography does Mr. Axelrod mention Plutarch. But Patton surely read Plutarch’s “Lives” and saw in Coriolanus a pattern for himself. Patton, a racist, anti-Semite, and snob who despised his middle-class fellow officers, would understand Coriolanus’s patrician contempt for the plebeians he refused to appease. Mr. Showalter called Patton a “bad boy general” – a good term for an impolitic man who slapped sick soldiers in public and was given to loose talk about having to fight the Russians as soon as the Germans were dispatched.

Yet unlike Coriolanus, Patton – for all his self-destructive tendencies – did not, ultimately, do himself in. Two qualities set him apart from his Roman avatar: Patton craved the admiration of the men he would lead in battle, and he was tormented by self-doubt. When he cursed a subaltern in public, he assembled his company of soldiers and apologized to the man – not for cursing, Mr. Axelrod points out, but for cursing him. Such public apologies made Patton a legend. Unlike Coriolanus, Patton knew what it meant to be “too military” – words he would use in his letters to his father.

Patton drove his men very hard because he wondered how well he would measure up against his vision of the ideal warrior. That he had to rehearse a military mug suggests a self-conscious mission to play a role in history. When he swore at a soldier for malingering and railed against cowards, it was probably because, as he confessed to his father, he was worried about his own courage in combat. Patton stood out as a commander who led from in front – in both world wars. But his courage resulted from overcoming self-doubt.

This is the George Patton Mr. Axelrod presents. Any breach in his own rigid practice of proper conduct must be acknowledged openly – even in obscure outposts – because Patton saw himself acting on a world stage. That Patton took himself so seriously might have made him a figure of fun to the modern soldier. He was earnest to a fault, but his mental and physical prowess overrode any obsessive tendency that might excite ridicule.

Mr. Axelrod does a commendable job of highlighting Patton’s controversial career and character, but compared to Mr. Showalter’s jaunty parallel biography, Mr. Axelrod’s effort lacks a certain dimension and panache. It may seem a quibble, but I was astonished that Mr. Axelrod did not mention Scott, whose indelible portrayal of Patton influenced a generation and relieved the agony of President Nixon’s dark nights of the soul in the White House.

Short biographies, in particular, it seems to me, should attend to public awareness of their subjects. Wesley Clark, general editor of the Great Generals series in which Mr. Axelrod’s book appears, alludes to Patton’s high standing among contemporary military leaders and explains how his tactics were emulated during the first Iraq war. But, like Mr. Axelrod, he does not focus on the meaning of the legend – the way Roy Blount Jr., for example, elaborates on the myth of Robert E. Lee in his short Penguin Lives volume.

Equally disappointing is Mr. Axelrod’s failure to say anything about other biographies of Patton, or where his book fits, so to speak, in Pattononia. The best short biographies are works of historiography, pointing the general reader in the direction of more comprehensive works. Mr. Axelrod’s biography is a good introduction to Patton, but not good enough.

crollyson@nysun.com