Synopses & Reviews
In a deeply personal account of his experiences as a Marine Corps sergeant in several major Pacific land battles, the critically acclaimed author of A World Lit Only by Fire interweaves memories and dreams as he recalls the horrors of Guadalcanal and Okinawa. Read by Barrett Whitener. Book available.
Synopsis
The nightmares began for William Manchester twenty-three years after World War II. In his dreams he lived with the recurring image of himself as a battle-weary youth "angrily demanding to know what had happened to the three decades since he had laid down his arms." To find out, Manchester visited those places in the Pacific where as a young Marine he fought the Japanese. In this intensely powerful memoir, America's preeminent biographer-historian, who has written so brilliantly about World War II in his acclaimed lives of General Douglas MacArthur (American Caesar) and Winston Churchill (The Last Lion), looks back at his own early life. He offers an unrivaled firsthand account of World War II in the Pacific: of what it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and most of all, what it felt like to one who underwent all but the ultimate of its experiences.