A successful one-volume encapsulation of a vast number of the elements of a tremendous war waged on land, on sea, and in the air. Dunnigan and Nofi (Victory and Deceit, p. 193, etc.) stress strategy over tactics in outlining the events of the Pacific war. They follow with analyses of orders of battle; technical descriptions of ships, aircraft, weapons, landing craft, and other equipment; as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each military unit; many charts and maps further clarify the text. The authors evaluate policies, politics, conspiracy theories, and rumors that ran rampant in the Pacific theater. They argue that the long-term cause of the war was the merciless aggressive militarism of Japan since 1870, explaining how the Japanese thought of themselves as the ``elder brothers'' of other Asians, an attitude that met resistance from Japan's Asian victims, such as China and Korea. Dunnigan and Nofi point out that Japan's military machine was useless without oil, and when the American oil embargo was imposed in 1941 it was believed that Japan would be virtually disarmed and unable to continue its aggression. Instead, Japan thought of itself as a victim of the West and considered the attack on Pearl Harbor as an act of self-defense (ideas that, according to the authors, are still taught in Japanese schools). An easy-reference ``who's who'' and gazetteer, as well as a chronology of the war in the Pacific neatly wrap up a long and complicated story. This should be useful as a concise reference for both modern students and general readers, since it conveys many technical and little-known facts in a spare, readable narrative style. A worthy addition to WW II history.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-05290-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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