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Title: The Second World War in the Far East by H.P. Willmott, John Keegan ISBN: 0-304-36127-5 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Wilmott's history of Pacific war typically unique
Comment: Almost twenty years ago, I bought a weighty volume on strategy in the Pacific War titled Empires in the Balance. It was marvelous, a clear, incisive, detailed, opinionated history of the first three months or so of World War II in the Pacific. It was written by H.P.Wilmott, a British historian.
After Empires he did a sequel of sorts, The Barrier and the Javelin, a history of the war around the world in the month of June 1944, and a work on British strategic planning in the Pacific during the war. Lastly, he's written this short history of WWII in the Pacific, replete with illustrations, elaborate color maps, and graphs and pie charts. Cassell (the publisher) apparently intends to do a number of these in its History of Warfare series. Hopefully they will all be this good.
Wilmott's trademark is looking at the same situation or set of circumstances as everyone else, and coming up with a completely different conclusion from the common wisdom. Here he advances his point (made in his earlier books) that Japanese planning before WWII was replete with wishful thinking and just plain ignorance. He emphasizes repeatedly that they didn't really start the war with a strategy, instead relying on a script that called on the American Navy to do certain things a certain way, and not be too bright about it. When the U.S. Navy didn't cooperate, things began to deteriorate. His larger point, that Japan really had no chance of winning the war in the Pacific unless a miracle happened, has also been made before, but it's worth repeating. Lastly, his point about the merchant shipping situation (basically that Japan lost the war as much because of the U.S. Navy's submarine effort as because of the battles they lost) is also eloquently stated, and accompanied by several charts for those who can't follow the statistics in the text.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would heartily recommend it. Strangely, there are a few outright typos, a seemingly growing bane of publishers. I don't think they detract from the overall value of the book though.
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Title: The Second World War in the West by Charles Messenger ISBN: 0304359858 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Renaissance at War by Thomas Arnold ISBN: 0304363537 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The First World War by Robin Prior, Trevor Wilson ISBN: 030435256X Publisher: Cassell Academic Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by JOHN KEEGAN ISBN: 0375400532 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Napoleonic Wars by Gunther Rothenberg ISBN: 0304359831 Publisher: Cassell Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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