Second Volume in Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy

Another excellent read in the Pacific War Trilogy.  Toll describes the actions of the US and Japanese commands from Guadalcanal to the Marianas Islands.  At 500 pages, he covers a lot of ground, well mostly sea, without skipping much detail.  He also includes extensive coverage of the Japanese Homefront and politics which is critical in understanding the Japanese way of war. Though by 1944 there is little the Japanese commanders can do to stave off the impending catastrophe.  Pushed by ideology, unable to escape by political means, and limited by a collapsing industry and economy, the Japanese struggle on. 

Toll also writes about the American service rivalry (MacArthur vs. Nimitz), the two-prong strategy and Admiral King's pushing for Central Pacific thrust.  Working for 33 years for the Navy, I particularly enjoyed Toll's inclusion of the intra-service rivalry between black shoes (ship drivers) and brown shoes (aviators) and how they fought (personal rivalry to constructive arguments)  to shape the carrier war doctrine.   This rivalry still exists today in the Navy.