The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima - Tapa dura

Daniel Marston is Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, UK. He completed both his BA and MA in History at McGill University, Montreal, and his DPhil in the History of War at Balliol College, Oxford. Previous publications include 'The Seven Years' War' (Osprey, 2001) and 'Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign' (Praeger, 2003). Daniel was born and raised in Boston, MA.

This big, thoroughly satisfactory introduction to the Pacific War, including its diplomatic prelude of deteriorating Japanese-American relations, boasts contributors who are all highly qualified. Some, such as Dennis Showalter, are virtually household names to World War II buffs, while others, less well known, saliently include Tomoyuki Ishizu on the opening amphibious operations and Joseph Alexander on the amphibious counterattack that carried Americans back across the Pacific. H. P. Willmott is particularly trenchant on the subject of Japanese naval strategy after Midway, in which the Japanese lost the rest of their naval opportunities. The accompanying photographs constitute a definite strength, inasmuch as, while not overwhelming the text, they are reproduced at large-enough scale, cover a wide range of subjects--from Japanese tanks on Chinese roads to American tanks on Pacific island hills--and exclude the overly familiar image. The combined efforts of the contributors also include annotation and bibliography well suited to leading Pacific War neophytes to further research. Roland Green
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