USS Arizona: Warship, Tomb, Monument - Tapa dura

The story of the USS Arizona encompasses far more than the milli-second BOOM! that split her hull and snuffed out the lives of 1177 men aboard her. The huge battleship led a fascinating life before her demise, and--as a poignant symbol of the attack that thrust the United States into World War II--has impacted millions of lives since. She lays where she sank, in the silt of Pearl Harbor, spanned now by a graceful white memorial that pays tribute to her dead. MacKinnon Simpson's newest book, USS Arizona  -  Warship · Tomb ·  Monument, pays tribute to the ship, her crews, and her symbolism through the years. Packed with many rarely-before seen images, the book includes such unlikely characters as Elvis Presley, whose benefit concert helped trigger the fund-raising for the Memorial, and Henry Williams, a three-year-old boy who placed the first bolt in her keel in 1915 and read a newspaper by the light of her raging fires as a lieutenant at Pearl Harbor in 1941. USS Arizona  -  Warship · Tomb · Monument tells a story that needed to be told, of why the Arizona is still so important to people from around the world who trek to visit her each year.

MacKinnon Simpson grew up in a small farmhouse outside the rural village of Pottersville, New Jersey. On July 4, 1970, Simpson marched in his last parade with the Pottersville Volunteer Fire Company and headed west to Hawai’i, where he immersed himself in the history of these islands. He served as historian and exhibit designer for the Hawai’i Maritime Center on Pier 7, and has researched, authored, and designed more than twenty books and scores of articles. He is an alumnus of Princeton University and is the father of two superb writers in their own right, Malia and Alika.