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Reviews
“A beautiful blend of history and prose and proves again Mr. Toll’s mastery of the naval-war narrative, carrying the reader smoothly from the marble halls of Washington to the Pacific’s gritty, red-stained beaches.”
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(Jonathan W. Jordan
- Wall Street Journal)
“No one has told the story of World War II in the Pacific, from beginning to bitter end, better than Ian W. Toll. This final volume concludes a brilliant trilogy. Elegant and supremely readable―don’t miss the finest military history of 2020.”
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(Alex Kershaw - New York Times best-selling author of The First Wave and Avenue of Spies)
“Toll’s expertly navigated narrative includes a number of new insights…It is exhaustive and authoritative and it shows the Navy in World War II as it really was, warts and all.”
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(Mark Perry, New York
Times Book Review)
"Combining beautiful prose with the gritty and bloody realities of the island hopping strategy, Toll’s third and final volume has been eagerly awaited by scholars and military history aficionados alike."
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(Claire Barrett - HistoryNet)
“In his masterly narrative, Ian Toll brings clarity and a stinging immediacy to America's long, bitter climb up the island ladder that led to Japan. This is maritime history at its best and most accessible, told with a verve that will leave the reader wondering how such a long book could have sped by so quickly.”
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(Richard Snow, author of Iron Dawn and A Measureless Peril)
“A riveting account of how the U.S. clawed its way back from defeat against initially unstoppable Japanese air, land and sea invasion forces after Pearl Harbor.... Toll offers a masterly guide to naval warfare and decision-making in Tokyo and Washington. He captures the brutish, all too often short life on deck and in the foxholes. This is military history at its best. Bring on volume three!”
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(Lionel Barber - Financial Times)
“[A] magnificent saga of the last year of the Pacific War....every bit as captivating as his first two [volumes]--Pacific Crucible (2011) and The Conquering Tide (2015)....A wonderful teller of war stories, Toll is also a shrewd cultural observer...Toll is a master; he is writing for the ages.”
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(Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder and Ike's Bluff)