RaveThe New York Times Book Review... superb ... Dispensing with the MacArthur-Nimitz meeting in his first chapter (it’s a good tale, but often told) allows Toll to turn his focus on the Navy, his true area of expertise as well as his enduring passion, and he deftly completes the portraits of Admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance and William \'Bull\' Halsey that he provided in his previous volumes. What emerges is a study as detailed as it is unsparing...And while the names of these Navy giants do not roll off the tongue as readily now as those of their celebrated Army counterparts, they should — with Nimitz emerging as the true architect of America’s Pacific naval strategy and Spruance as his masterly, if sometimes overly careful, tactician ... Toll’s expertly navigated narrative includes a number of new insights as well as a new approach that hypothesizes the struggle between \'sequentialists\' and \'cumulativists\' inside the American military ... Toll’s familiarity with this hitherto hidden tussle, while still incomplete, is elaborate enough to be provocative, which new historical ideas often are ... Toll’s trilogy is a departure: It is exhaustive and authoritative and it shows the Navy in World War II as it really was, warts and all ... But no history of the Pacific War can be complete without presenting an intimate knowledge of Japanese naval and political decision-making. Toll does this too, showing a tactile command of the subject that puts Japan’s war in its proper perspective.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
