Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan

by Ronald H. Spector

Book Overview

"The best book by far on the Pacific War" (The New York Times Book Review), this classic one-volume history of World War II in the Pacific draws on declassified intelligence files; British, American,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0029303605
• Release Date: November 1984
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 589 Pages
• Weight: 2.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 2.0" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

SImply The Best Single-Volume Book About Japan's War!

Good books devoting themselves to the overall scope and breadth of Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War Two are hard to find, but this book solves the reader's problem nicely. It is a comprehensive, entertaining, and fair-minded book that careful details both Japanese and Allied perspectives before, during, and at the conclusion of the war. This book is truly a carefully constructed, exhaustively researched and quite well documented one-volume history that everyone should love. I first discovered it on the syllabus of a graduate-level Harvard history course, and have had it on my shelf ever since. Written in a very accessible style that allows the reader to stream through as though one is reading a novel, and it is filled with interesting anecdotes and new insights that keep the reader entertained and interested throughout the nearly 600 pages of the book. My own personal favorite was an actual complaint filed immediately after the attack at Pearl Harbor by a Hawaiian resident of a dog who was allegedly barking in Morse code to the Japanese ships offshore. It is also offers a number of new thought provoking and intriguing ideas about aspects of the war against Japan for the reader.The author engages in an active reinterpretation of the war based on declassified intelligence files, archival material, Japanese documents and an impressive collection of interviews with principals involved in the almost five year struggle to defeat the Japanese after the events at Pearl Harbor. It is interesting to learn that the U.S. planned to wage a wide-ranging campaign of submarine attacks against enemy shipping even before the start of the war, and also indicates that MacArthur was lucky not to be unceremoniously dumped after his bad bungling of the defense of the Philippines and also because of his active disregard for a number of important intercepts of Japanese messages that could have saved literally thousands of American and other lives. Spector also reveals that U.S. decisions were often more influenced by the nature of our stormy relationship with our British allies and our own inter-service rivalries than by strategic concerns.The author vividly conjures up accurate and spell-binding accounts of the major battles of the war, and provides a number of intriguing descriptions of lesser known aspects of the Pacific campaign, as well. He takes the reader on a fascinating whirlwind tour of the war, leaping from details of critical meetings between war planners in the Pentagon to social, economic, and political aspects of the engagement to excellent on-the-scene coverage of the battlegrounds. He shows us how the war against the Japanese was different from that being waged in Europe, and how this intensely naval type of conflict was in a number of ways much more risky and innovative on our part than its European counterpart. I was particularly fascinated by his interesting argument that the most critica

A "Must have" for any serious WWII student

This is probably one of the BEST single volume works in the field. ANY student of the US Navy, or World war II who doesn't have this on their shelf isn't serious about the field. I CANNOT recommend it too highly, both for content and for readability. Buy it.... you WON'T regret it.