"Compelling. No other living author could have gotten it all down so
well."--New York Daily News

"Gripping. It is impossible for an American to read this book without pride in what
his country accomplished in those days of enormous challenge."
--Christian Science Monitor

"When Manchester speaks of the awesome heroism and hideous suffering of the
Marines he lived with and fought with, he is reverent before the mystery of individual
courage and gallantry."--Baltimore Sun

"A strong and honest account. Manchester's combat writing stands comparison
with the best."--New York Times Book Review

"It belongs with the best war memoirs ever written."--Los Angeles Times

In this intensely powerful memoir, America's pre-eminent biographer-historian, who
has written so brilliantly about World War II in his acclaimed lives of General Douglas
MacArthur (American Caesar) and Winston Churchill (The Last Lion),
looks back at his own early life.

This memoir offers an unrivaled firsthand account of World War II in the Pacific: of what
it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and most of all, what it felt like to one who
underwent all but the ultimate of its experiences.