"From Makin to Bougainville: Marine Raiders in the Pacific War" by Jon T. Hoffman is a compelling narrative that chronicles the daring exploits of the Marine Raiders during World War II. The book delves into the strategic significance of the Pacific theater and highlights the unique role played by these elite units. Hoffman meticulously details the challenges faced by the Raiders, including harsh environments and fierce enemy resistance, while showcasing their bravery and tactical ingenuit...

"Drawing from previously unknown and unused sources, Holland paints a vivid picture of the desperate fights that broke the back of the Japanese forces ashore during that pivotal period of 1942. Holland’s ground-breaking account is vital to the understanding of the struggle to secure America’s first major land victory in the Pacific.” – Seth Paridon, Historian, Deputy Director, Mississippi Armed Forces MuseumThe Matanikau battles proved to be the critical turning po...

Richly illustrated with 12 maps and 46 photos.The lightning campaign that toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in the spring of 2003 seemed to herald the arrival of a new way of war, as Germany's blitzkrieg had done at the beginning of World War II. But the initial victory soon devolved into a persistent counterinsurgency conflict reminiscent of the long U.S. effort to pacify the Philippines after the rapid defeat of Spain in 1898. In Iraq, American soldiers and their Coalition...

Featured on the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Reading List and the Chief of Naval Operation’s “Naval Power” Reading ListThe Marine Corps is known for its heroes, and Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller has long been considered the greatest of them all. His assignments and activities covered an extraordinary spectrum of warfare. Puller mastered small unit guerrilla warfare as a lieutenant in Haiti in the 1920s, and at the end of his career commanded a division in K...

In February 1942, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, ordered the creation of a new unit designated the 1st Marine Raider Battalion. This elite force, and its three sister battalions, went on to gain considerable fame for fighting prowess in World War II. There is more to the story of these units, however, than a simple tale of combat heroics. The inception, growth, and sudden end of the raiders reveals a great deal about the development and conduct of am...

The Matanikau battles proved to be the critical turning points in the land campaign for Guadalcanal—the campaign's longest and bloodiest ground fight. A five-month conflict raged along the river and its basin. The real importance of this area has long remained unrecognized, yet the American and Japanese forces that fought over it knew that it was the key to the ultimate prize of Henderson Airfield. In this mile-long bloody tug-of-war from the river across to the hills and ravines were foug...

From Robert Leckie, the World War II veteran and New York Times bestselling author of Helmet for My Pillow, whose experiences were featured in the HBO miniseries The Pacific, comes this vivid narrative of the astonishing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal.From the Japanese soldiers’ carefully calculated—and ultimately foiled—attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a...

The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFICThis was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands...Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as a twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa - two of the fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII - he witnesses the dehumanising brutality display...

The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFICHere is one of the most riveting first-person accounts to ever come out of World War 2. Robert Leckie was 21 when he enlisted in the US Marine Corps in January 1942. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his journey, from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war's fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Di...

“It’s not easy to stay alive with a $1,000 bounty on your head.”In 1967, a bullet cost thirteen cents, and no one gave Uncle Sam a bigger bang for his buck than the 5th Marine Regiment Sniper Platoon. So feared were these lethal marksmen that the Viet Cong offered huge rewards for killing them. Now noted Vietnam author John J. Culbertson, a former 5th Marine sniper himself, presents the riveting true stories of young Americans who fought with bolt rifles a...

**A remarkable eyewitness account of the most brutal combat of the Pacific War, from Peleliu to Okinawa, this is the true story of R.V. Burgin, the real-life World War II Marine Corps hero featured in HBO®'s The Pacific.“Read his story and marvel at the man...and those like him.”—Tom Hanks**When a young Texan named R.V. Burgin joined the Marines 1942, he never imagined what was waiting for him a world away in the Pacific. There, amid steamy jungles, he encountered ...

A story of heroism, friendship, and courage in World War 2—as seen in the award-winning HBO miniseries The Pacific.In 1944, the U.S. Marines were building the 5th Marine Division—also known as “The Spearhead”—in preparation for the invasion of the small, Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima...When Chuck Tatum began Marine boot camp, he was just a smart-aleck teenager eager to serve his country. Little did he know that he would be training under a livin...