Book Review: The Pacific War: The Strategy, Politics, and Players that Won the War

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by William B. Hopkins

Minneapolis: Zenith/MBI, 2008. Pp. vii, 392. Illus, maps, notes, biblio., index. $30.00. ISBN:0760334358

As indicated in its sub-title, this work provides a comprehensive look at Pacific War at the highest levels, policy, grand strategy, economics, and particularly the personalities, political and military, who directed the war. 

A trio of chapters setting the deep background are followed by a series of chapters that unfold chronologically, and cover specific campaigns or aspects the war, including strategic direction, economic mobilization, the submarine and air offensives, and the surrender of Japan .  Operational developments are treated only in the broadest outline, and tactical and technical matters hardly at all, which is appropriate given the purpose of the book. 

The book successfully synthesizes a good deal of recent scholarship on the war, and is likely to be of use to anyone with an interest in the Pacific Theater.


Reviewer: A. A. Nofi   


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