I was struggling to get through a book on the Norwegian Campaign so I read this to be reminded of what a really well written military history was like. It's an excellent account of the last two years or so of the War in the Pacific. Some of it is familiar - Leyte Gulf, MacArthur, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the atomic bomb, Slim in Burma - but Hastings makes it seem fresh.
There's also chapters on areas not as familiar - such as the strikes and malaise that plagued Australia in the second half of the war (we are unable to confront this as a nation - it's too touchy because it gets hijacked by cultural warriors on both sides and it shouldn't), but also the war in China (still crucially downplayed by Western histories), the Russian invasion of Manchuria (so much pointless death), the tale of the B29 and Curtis Le May, the submariners (who were the ones who really won the war). A superb book.
George MacDonald Fraser's memoirs get quoted a lot.
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