A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2018 Oxford University Press On May 2, 2018, the New York-based North American division of Oxford University Press published World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig L. Symonds. As the title implies, Symonds' nearly 800-page book is a one-volume account of the naval battles that took place during the Second World War from the beginning of the war in Europe on September 1, 1939, to Japan's surrender (fittingly) aboard the battleship USS Missouri six years later. Written by a renowned naval historian and Professor Emeritus and former history department chair at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD,  World War II at Sea: A Global History tells the story of history's largest clash of arms from the perspectives of the Axis and Allied navies, the admirals that led them, and the officers, sailors, Marines, and airmen that fought - and often died - in such diverse places as the River Plate, the Denmark Strait, Cape Matapan, the Coral Sea, Midway, the North Cape, Savo...

(C) 2015 W.W. Norton On August 7, 1942, exactly eight months after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, elements of the First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and two other islands occupied by enemy forces. Two months earlier, the U.S. Navy had won a decisive engagement at the Battle of Midway and stopped Japan’s eastward offensive by sinking four aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser and thwarting Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plans to destroy the American Pacific Fleet. Now, for the first time in World War II, American forces were seizing the strategic initiative and taking offensive action against a major Axis power. Code-named Operation WATCHTOWER, the landings on Guadalcanal, Tonombago, and Gavutu had one goal: the capture of a new Japanese airfield under construction on Guadalcanal’s north coast. If the Japanese completed it, the air base could be used to cut the lifeline between the U.S. and Australia. If this occurred, Australia could face a Japanes...