[books i've been reading]

I've wrapped up my survey of World War Two history in parallel with Jeff Shaara's World War Two series. Eagle Against the Sun is one of the most comprehensive books on the American war with Japan in the Pacific. The book opens with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and after a lengthy treatment of the "states of mind" of both the Americans and Japanese, dives right into the war itself, paying particular attention to the strategies and major naval operations. The swift "blitzkrieg" of the Japanese with the invasion of Guam, Wake Island, the fall of the Philippines and the fall of Singapore and Malaya cannot be overcome by Dolittle's stunt of taking Army bombers off a carrier to bomb the Japanese mainland. Allied prospects start looking up at the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway, followed by the Battle of the frigid Aleutians. The author spends a lot of time with the battles for the Solomon Islands: Guadalcanal, Papua New Guinea, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Bougainville and New Guinea. He then shifts his attention to the Central Pacific theater: the Gilbert Islands and the bloodlettings at Tarawa and Makin; the seizure of the Marshall Islands; the takeover of the Marianas with the horrifying battles for Saipan, Tinian, and re-taking Guam, all overshadowed by the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" (or Battle of the Philippine Sea). He breezes through the battles for the Paulus Islands, focusing on Peleliu. He shifts his attention back to the Southern Pacific and MacArthur's liberation of the Philippine Islands beginning with the invasion of Leyte and its corresponding, epic battle, "The Battle of Leyte Gulf," and on up through to the invasion of Luzon, the liberation of the POWs at Bataan, and the freeing of Manila. He then shifts back to the Central Pacific: Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shaara's historical fiction focuses on the battle for Okinawa and the developments of the atomic bomb and its detonations in Japan, bringing the Pacific War to a grisly but decisive close.