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    Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan
    Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan
    Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan
    Audiobook23 hours

    Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan

    Written by Ronald Spector

    Narrated by Tom Perkins

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    About this audiobook

    Historian Ronald H. Spector, drawing on declassified intelligence files, an abundance of British and American archival material, Japanese scholarship and documents, and the research and memoirs of scholars, politicians, and the military men, presents a thrilling narrative of American war in the Pacific.

    Spector reassesses U.S. and Japanese strategy and offers some provocative interpretations. He shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was less a product of strategic calculation and more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition.

    Combining impeccable research with electrifying detail, Spector vividly recreates the major battles, little-known campaigns, and unfamiliar events of this brutal 44-month struggle.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 18, 2019
    ISBN9781400172122
    Author

    Ronald Spector

    Ronald H. Spector is an award-winning scholar of modern military history and has taught at the National War College and the US Army War College.  A frequent contributor to scholarly journals, his publications include In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia and After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam. He is professor of history and international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University.

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    Reviews for Eagle Against the Sun

    4/5

    118 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A great overview of PTO. Pacific Theater of Operations. Learned a bit more.
    • 4/5
      I think this is the best one-volume on the Pacific War that I have ever read. Wonderful Folio Society edition. There were a few repetitive moments between chapters when the same factoid was presented or same transition repeated between events, but overall a great read - tore through it over a holiday weekend.
    • 4/5
      In the 1960s Macmillan began publishing a series entitled "The Macmillan Wars of the United States." Written by some of the nation's leading military historians, its volumes offered surveys of the various conflicts America had fought over the centuries, the strategies employed, and the services which fought them. Ultimately fourteen volumes were published over two decades, with many of them still serving as excellent accounts of their respective subjects.

      As the last book published in the series, Ronald Spector's contribution to it serves as a sort of capstone to its incomplete efforts. In it he provides an account of the battles and campaigns waged by the United States against Japan in the Second World War, from the prewar planning and the assumptions held in the approach to war to the deployment of the atomic bombs that ended it. In between the covers all of the major naval battles and island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific, as well as America's military efforts in the China-Burma-India theater. He rounds out his coverage with chapters discussing both the social composition of the forces America deployed and the complex intelligence operations against the Japanese, ones that extended beyond the now-famous codebreaking efforts that proved so valuable.

      Though dated in a few respects, overall Spector's book serves as a solid single-volume survey of the war waged by the United States against Japan. By covering the efforts against the Japanese in mainland Asia, he incorporates an important aspect of the war too often overlooked or glossed over in histories of America's military effort against the Japanese, one that often influenced developments elsewhere in the theater. Anyone seeking an introduction to America's war with Japan would be hard pressed to find a better book, which stands as a great example of what Macmillan set out to accomplish when they first embarked upon the series.
    • 4/5
      A comprehensive telling of the Allied War effort against Japan in the Pacific Theater during WW2. This is what I consider a must read for anyone who is interested in this particular topic of Military History.
    • 4/5
      This is a generally excellent history of the Pacific theater in WWII from the (mostly) US perspective. Well written, carefully researched and thoroughly documented, it is exceptional as a bibliographical resource for further study. I am sure there will always be dozens of both major and minor issues we, decades later, Monday morning quarterbacks who were not even there can debated but I would consider assessments and judgements in this book to be well balanced - with a couple of exceptions. Though Spector reports some of the tragedies stemming from the massively arrogant egos of too many ranking US officers resulting in inefficient command structures and foolish rivalries causing untold numbers of lost military as well as civilian lives he seems to excuse these as acceptable characteristics of war. Some of these desirve at least moral condemation. On another level of morality the decision to use the atomic bomb is a bottomless quagmire of issues but I think Spector gave short shrift to argument that dropping the bombs ended the war more quickly thanavailable any "not dropping" options available to the US and saved many lives both US and Japanese.
    • 4/5
      Eagle against the Sun by Ron Spector turned out to be quite an informative book about some little known areas; Burma, Thailand, New Guinea, coastwatchers and submarines as well as interesting insights into the MacArthur vs Nimitz issues that were part of the Pacific scene. Well written with good documentation, at the end of each chapter, and seeded nicely with apt personal vignettes.
    • 4/5
      I read Ronald Spector’s one-volume history of the American war against Japan in honor of last month’s VJ day. Spector’s book received acclaim when it was published in 1985. He covers, in 589 pages, the Pacific conflict from pre-war planning to the conclusion of the war. In doing so, he must strike a balance between detail of action, strategic political decisions, intelligence and logistics. He does this well and the book is easy reading. I found an appropriate balance between background behind the strategic and political decisions made (Why were we in Guadalcanal anyway?) and the salt spray of action in the air, jungles and on the seas. The advances across the Pacific rightly receive prime attention but action in China, India, and Burma are not neglected.As a survey of the Pacific war, I recommend it. As I read it, I found myself wondering how those images of leadership color our thinking now and how true were they. For example, we hear about Lieutenant Colonel Chesty Puller’s First Battalion, Seventh Marines critical defense against superior numbers of Japanese at the airfield on Guadalcanal. Yet, how much of that was accomplished by top down direction and how much was accomplished by deliberate planning, and distributed decision making by small elements of Marines in their individual foxholes?I also found myself wanting more information on the industrial decisions made in wartime America. When and why did were the key decisions about the B-29 made? What about the Essex class carrier? I’m looking for a good follow-up read here.The most exciting book I’ve read about the Pacific war is the recent Shattered Sword, The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. It covers a specific battle but the depth of research is eye-opening and myth-busting!
    • 4/5
      An excellent review of the pacific war. Much told from the Japanese view.
    • 4/5
      Good overview (what a task!), but it's not very exciting (although not as dry as some). Telling a story from so high level requires lots of maps (since there's so little anecdotal storytelling), but there are no maps except the entire theater map on the inside cover which is not very helpful.
    • 4/5
      Overall, I liked the book. I think the author did a pretty good job starting at Pearl Harbor and leading up to the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender. If you want an all around view of the Pacific theater and the major battles from an American perspective, this book gets the job done.I only have 2 issues with the book. Were it not for these 2 things, I probably would have given it 5 stars as I think the author did a phenomenal job from the source citing standpoint. First, I think there should have been a few maps included with the book. There is a general map encompassing the Pacific theater, but that's it. Normally, I don't care about maps when reading history books. However, in a book covering this many battles and operations, you either have to have very good visualization skills or spend time in other sources tracking down maps. Second, and to me the most important issue, was the matter of the author's apparent distaste for Gen MacArthur. Valid points were made in terms of MacArthur's decisions or his political maneuvering. I don't deny the man had faults. I also don't believe he was the savior of the war in the Pacific as some would have you believe. Be fair though. I got the impression that even if General MacArthur walked on water, the author would still find something to criticize him about. For example, what bearing did the WAAC's in Australia have to do with prosecuting the war? I didn't get the scandal that the author tried to put forth and fault MacArthur for. It seemed like a straw man argument to bolster the author's case against MacArthur.In the end though, I highly recommend this book. I thought it was broken up into decent sized portions and the author didn't fall into the trap of dehumanizing the Japanese soldiers no matter how fanatical they were. That tends to make it a bit more like reading history and less like reading propaganda.
    • 4/5
      Spector's history fills a valuable role in the historiography of World War II. There are better books on the naval war, better books on the air war, and better books on the land war . . . not to mention books that integrate British, Australian, and Chinese conributions to the defeat of Japan. Decades after its publication, however, I know of no book that deals with this particular subject (the US-Japan war of 1941-45 in all its dimensions) with the skill and assurance of this one.