School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up

Offering more than 1300 pages of day-by-day accounts of political decision making, troop deployments, and military operations, this is an incredibly ambitious work. Chronologically organized, starting in 1922 and ending on November 19, 1945, the two main subject headings are Atlantic and Pacific, which are subdivided by the subordinate theatres (e.g., European Theatre of Operations, or ETO) and then into specific geographic regions (e.g., North Africa). The entries prior to December 7, 1941, are less in-depth in terms of military operations, but offer key highlights of what was taking place in the war in which the United States was not yet formally involved. After that they are much more thorough and deal mostly with operations in which the United States participated. Following the chronology of events are several informative sections including a list of Americans awarded the Medal of Honor, biographies of major American military leaders, a glossary that includes weapons terminology, appendixes of relevant statistics (casualties, enemy aircraft destroyed, etc.), and a well-detailed map section. An extensive bibliography is also included. The comprehensiveness and thoroughness of research that have gone into this work are impressive. Even Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci's raid on the Cabanatuan prisoner of war camp is described (although unfortunately, neither the man's name nor Cabanatuan is indexed). A solid addition.-Robyn Walker, Elgin Court Public School, St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada