The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

Book Overview

Penguin delivers you to the front lines of The Pacific Theater with the real-life stories behind the HBO miniseries. Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August of 1945, five men connected by happenstance fought the key battles of the war against Japan. From the debacle in Bataan, to the miracle at Midway and the relentless vortex of Guadalcanal,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 045123023X
• ISBN13: 9780451230232
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Nal Caliber
• Length: 489 Pages
• Weight: 1.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.0" x 9.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An outstanding, personal survey for any who would gain insights into the war's experience

THE PACIFIC offers an official companion book to the HBO miniseries, a 10-part series based on true stories of World War II Marines, and blends real-life stories of three selected Marines with accounts of their encounters across the Pacific and their eventual return home. An outstanding, personal survey for any who would gain insights into the war's experience.

The Pacific: Excellent read

I found the Pacific an excellent read, especially as I watch the mini-series on HBO. The book is written in a very easy to follow narrative and is rich is detail about WWII warriors -- Marines in the air and on the ground as they go through Midway, Guadalcanal, Pelileu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It is a great companion piece to the mini-series and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about the warriors of WWII. There are characters in the book who aren't in the mini-series and some of the main characters on TV are minor characters in the book, but that is a very minor item. These aren't the generals or admirals, but the privates and sergeants and junior officers who slugged it out in pitched battles in the air and on the ground during the war in the Pacific. You do not have to be an expert in WWII history to enjoy this book.

loved it!

I am glad I bought and read the book before I read all of these reviews. I loved the book. It made me proud to be an American to read about what these men went through and still fought on. The Pacific Theater of war never gets the acknowledgement that it deserves. Since reading this book I have been reading alot more of Pacific War themed books with a new appreciation for what our men and women endured. Thank you for writing this book and giving our Vets the hero worship that they deserve.

The Pacific

This book (as an actual, as opposed to made-up story)is very interesting in that it shows the war and the horrors that the Marines had to deal with on a daily basis, on the ground and in the thick of things.

Four and a half stars

Reading "The Pacific" was a chore--it's about 450 pages of fine print with insufficient supporting graphics, no table of contents to point you to desired chapters, no glossary to help you understand undefined terms, and no index to aid in research or reviews. That said, I still give this book at least four and a half stars, which this system displays as five. That's because "The Pacific" brings the utter horror of World War II in the PTO to a level of brutal clarity rarely achieved by other writers, if ever. It reads more like a historical novel than pure history, but pure history it surely is, being based entirely on the personal accounts of its principal characters. I also give it high marks for not simply parroting the HBO script. Despite the book's title and its marketing, this is not the book version of the video production. The book goes far beyond what you'll see on HBO, especially with the very dramatic account of a Marine who doesn't appear in the TV version at all. Col. Austin Shofner's personal story of prison camp survival, escape, service with Philippine guerrillas, and desperate combat on Peleliu and Okinawa would warrant a 10-part miniseries itself. The book does have some tedious passages, but that simply attests to its realism. The Pacific War was not all blistering combat; everyone involved endured endless periods of training, traveling, non-combat duties, and sometimes weeks or months of simply anxious waiting. Again, it's history, not a novel, so the author has included some of the highs and lows each character's life that don't involve the Japanese. Read the entire book before judging it (clearly, some of the critics here haven't bother to do that). It deserves a spot on any bookshelf containing the best histories of the war in the Pacific. With some better reference aids, I'd happily add that final half star.