Total Page : 512
Publisher : NAL Hardcover
Publication Date : 2010 03 02
>> Some how manages to make a great story boring
I am so disappointed in this book and it s such a shame as it could have been so much better with even a little bit of editing Admittedly the bar was set pretty high as I just finished E B Sledge s riveting account of his experiences in the Pacific in With the Old Breed but this book doesn t even manage to come close a victim of just plain poor writing What should be a page turner based on it s subject matter is instead too painful to read and not because of what s happening in the story My advise is to pass this one up there are many much better books on the subject available
>> Accept This One For What It Is And Enjoy
There are many things to like about The Pacific The writing unfortunately is not one of them But do we always pick up a book about the Greatest Generation and their exploits during World War II and expect a literary masterpiece Not this reader Sure Stephen Ambrose moved us to tears as he wrote about the mighty Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division going toe to toe with Hitler s elite SS Armored units in Arnhem Ambrose gave life to the men of Easy Company 506th Infantry Regiment with passion and great clarity recounting their matchless courage in a way that few World War II historians have done before or since
His son Hugh deserves credit for attempting to do for the Pacific Theater what his father did for the European Theater making it real for those of us who were not there while trying to fill his father s considerable shoes Ambrose Jr certainly is not without colorful characters in Manila John Basilone Sidney Sid Phillips Eugene B Sledgehammer Sledge Austin Shifty Shofner and Vernon Mike Micheel to work with and help him tell the story These men are straight out of central casting and worth every bit of the legend attendant to their storied names Without perhaps the finesse of his father Ambrose knits together the compelling story of their service and how their trajectories intersect in a war that would know no parallels in its ferocity And he does so in a highly readable way Yes his writing style is a bit choppy and he does not always handle the transition from one character s experience to another s as seamlessly or as artfully as he might Yet there is believability in his writing
More important we can accept this book for what it is a companion reader to the HBO miniseries with reasonable entertainment value
An avid reader of military history and war stories alike I found The Pacific enjoyable for not only the realism but also the humorous anecdotes I received a glimpse into the experiences of this uncommon breed of men as if they were relating them to me themselves Many of their recollections ring true and are recounted as I believe these men would actually talk not through a lot of frilly prose but through honest frank and forthright accounts of a hellish existence on Bataan Guadalcanal Peleliu Iwo Jima Okinawa and in the middle of the Pacific Midway with plenty of torpedoes bombs and antiaircraft fire keeping their juices flowing Not just another day at the office to be sure From reading The Pacific I was able to totally get it and IT was sheer mayhem Fear was the only constant in their helter skelter lives
This is war as it really happens organized chaos For the Marines and naval aviators who went through the meat grinder that characterized MacArthur s and Nimitz s Pacific island hopping campaign this is life as they knew it Mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds and raindrops the size of silver dollars suicidal Japanese banzai charges and bombs shaped like planes falling determinedly from the sky on the helpless sailors below
From Micheel s white knuckled 60 degree dive in his Dauntless on an enemy aircraft carrier to Basilone s machine gun virtuoso in the face of hundreds of crazed marauding Imperial Japanese soldiers the reader sees it all unvarnished and as it really happened Ambrose s men plain spoken and salt of the earth Americans were heroes of the highest order
For me reading The Pacific was yet another reminder of the extraordinary sacrifice our grandparents made on our behalf The bouts with malaria and dengue fever in the Cabantuan POW camp the boxcar size artillery rounds launched from 16 inch guns installed on Imperial Japanese Navy battleships raining down on Marine fighting positions dug on Guadalcanal amidst the densest jungles conceived by God How did these men do it They did it simply because their buddies on either side were expecting them to do it Not because they were superhuman but because they were all too human and were young enough and foolish enough to believe they could
Island by island these great Americans fought their way to just miles from the Japanese mainland and within range of U S bombers Sometimes ingloriously but always with love of country in their hearts they avenged the cold blooded murder of their comrades at Pearl Harbor while reminding the world and any other would be hegemon that America remained the mightiest nation on earth that her spirit might be bowed but never broken
The Pacific is above all else instructive We learn that in the final analysis men learn to overcome unrelenting hardship perhaps most of all because of those they hold most dear their brothers in arms They are the closest kind of relative enduring whatever the elements or the enemy can throw at them and they derive immense strength from the bonds that are forged by fire It is not for the the unitiated to understand It is for those who have lived it to merely nod to one another in quiet acknowledgement
Accept this one for what it is and enjoy
>> A Good Book but Not a Real Companion to the Mini Series
My reading of this book was a first for me in a couple of ways This was the first of Hugh Ambrose s work I have read and my first experience with a Kindle Book or any type of e book for that matter It was not my first attempt at reading a book that was written to be a companion to a movie or TV mini series I willingly allowed myself to fall into that trap again I am as I almost always am disappointed that I read and completed the book before watching or in this case finished watching the visual production
Mr Ambrose s work in this book seemed very well researched and provided a real insight into the personal experiences of the main cast of characters His writing style is not my favorite however and his habit of shifting between third person story telling and first person quotes often in the middle of sentences and without any set up or notice was both distracting and confusing This habit often broke the rhythm of my reading and required me to stop and sort out what had happened to the words This reduced my enjoyment of the book I am certainly no expert in the history of the Second World War in the Pacific but I didn t come across anything in this book that struck me as incorrect This is a good read for those who wish to see and feel the war through the accounts of the men in the front lines I give it a solid 4 out of 5
The down side of reading this book while watching or before watching the mini series is that I am already disappointed with the producer s apparent choice to not include the naval aviation thread Trying not to throw down any spoilers here That thread was one of the best in the book and I think the mini series suffers for the lack of its inclusion The book and mini series part company within the first thirty minutes of the mini series and I do not see how the producers are going to drag their story line back into synch with the book at this point I ll watch episode 4 tomorrow night I loved Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and I am not enjoying The Pacific mini series nearly as much But then again I didn t read a companion book prior to watching the visual productions of the other two My advice to everyone is to read this book but wait until you finish watching the mini series You ll enjoy both much more
Now to a short critique of the Kindle Version of this book I like the active links between the work and the footnotes and references It was really pleasant to be able to flip back and forth between them There were however at least two places in the book where a part of the text was just missing A paragraph would be going along and the words would just stop in the middle of a sentence and a new paragraph would start There did not appear to a great amount of text missing at least from what I could tell but it is frustrating to try and puzzle out what the author had to say based on what came before and after the AWOL text There was also an instance of a footnote being embedded in the text in the middle of a sentence as a matter of fact that clearly should have been represented by an active link and contained at the back of the book I hope that these problems are not representative of the quality control in Kindle Books especially the first run ones
There is another issue that makes me frustrated with people who think it is okay to treat customers this way The price of this book dropped by 4 00 between the time I bought it and now two or three weeks later when I returned to review it That tells me that it would pay everyone to let a new book age on the website for two or three weeks before you buy it Shame on you Amazon I think I going to read a couple more Kindle books using the freeware Kindle for PC to see if these are pandemic problems or just a one off problems with this particular book before laying out 350 00 or more for a Kindle and required accessories I give the Kindle version of this book a 3 out 5 for quality of production and pricing tricks
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