Table of Contents

Part 1 I The Gun in the Street Chapter 2 Appreciating the Situation Chapter 3 The American Situation and Plan of Campaign Chapter 4 The Battle of the Coral Sea, 5-8 May 1942 Chapter 5 The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942 Chapter 6 Strategic Choices and New Realities Part 7 II The Campaigns in Eastern New Guinea and the Lower Solomons Chapter 8 Seizing the Initiative, 21 July-18 September 1942 Chapter 9 Battle, 18 September-13 November 1942 Chapter 10 Decision, 26 October-31 December 1942 Part 11 The New Realities Chapter 12 The Imbalance of Exhaustion, 1 January-15 November 1943

About the Author

H. P. Willmott is senior research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and Society, De Montfort University, and visiting lecturer at Greenwich Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich.

Reviews

[Willmott's] narrative is lean and informative, his reasoning sound, and his research impeccable.
*World War II History*

H. P. Willmott addresses a critical juncture of the Pacific War—a roughly eighteen-month period when victory turned on the skills, planning, and adjustments of the protagonists. He weaves a fascinating argument—that Japan faced defeat, but the means and dimension of that defeat were not a foregone conclusion. That shrewd judgment, one self-evident but one that historians have not adequately focused upon in previous studies, provides a convincing interpretation that underpins this well-written and accessible book.
*Thomas W. Zeiler, author of Ambassadors in Pinstripes: The Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire*

A must-read for the student of military and naval history and strategy and anyone interested in understanding the road to America's greatness and the unimaginable risks and sacrifices that marked that journey.
*W. Spencer Johnson, Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired)*

A splendid narrative with analytical depth. Willmott challenges the common perception of the war in the Pacific: the real change of tide did not occur as early as Coral Sea or Midway, or as late as the fall of the Marianas and the Philippines. The most crucial period was between February and October 1943. The Japanese failure and the American success in fully mobilizing human and material resources during this new stage were decisive. Willmott convincingly unfolds this theory by letting every minute detail paint the larger picture of this gigantic struggle.
*Haruo Tohmatsu, Tamagawa University, Tokyo*

Willmott...does an excellent job of clearly delineating and explaining the complex series of events from the Battle of the Coral Sea through the grueling campaigns in the Solomans and New Guinea. The author's style is clear and easy to read, maps are both plentiful and appropriately scaled, and the author manages to depict complex events fully without bogging down in excessive detail.
*Military History Of The West*

Thought-provoking, argumentative, controversial, and guaranteed to make a reader re-evaluate existing accounts of naval, air, and ground operations in the South and Southwest Pacific between May 1942 and October 1943.
*World War II*