★★★★★ 5
A Comprehensive Balanced History of the Guadalcanal Campaign -- Must Read!
Format: Hardcover
I've read a number of good books on the Guadalcanal campaign, and always thought that "Neptune's Inferno" by Hornfischer was the absolute best.
I was wrong. Although Hornfischer does a superb account of the Navy and its travails and triumphs, Inferno doesn't delve deeply into the Marine (and Army) land battles. This book does both. Moreover, it provides a continuous timeline of both, and does so in such a way that the reader better understands both as related actions. For instance, I was never really aware that for the first three and a half months the Americans controlled the seas during daylight, and the Japanese at night (sounds a little like Viet Nam). The November 13 sea battle between Americans and Japanese -- in which US cruisers took on Japanese battleships and two American admirals died -- was in fact a clash of a major last ditch effort by the Japanese to reinforce their troops and destroy Henderson Field, which would have allowed them to control the seas both day and night. By that time there had been multiple bloody battles ashore between the Marines and Japanese, with the balance favoring the Marines, but if the Japanese had wrested control of the airfield and seas that would have been old history. The book includes a good view from the Japanese perspective, and some little known historical tidbets as well, e.g., Guadalcanal received its name from the Spanish home town of a ships officer who accompanied Spanish explorer Don Alvaro Medana, who discovered the island during a 1568 expedition to discover the fabled King Solomon's gold mines. Who knew? :-)
Bottom line: I highly recommend this book, both for its balanced coverage of the entire campaign, land and sea, and even more for its integrated narrative -- you know what was taking place (or had taken place) on almost a day-by-day basis, which allows the reader to fully appreciate how actions ashore influenced those at sea, and vice versa.
IMO, a must read, even for those who thought (like me) that they knew it all!
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Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2017
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