I very much enjoyed this book. As someone who served on the island of Adak with the Marine Corps during the Cold War, it was great to read a book about a place I know very well. It gave wonderful look at what life was like during WW2 in the aleutians. You come away with an appreciation of how harsh it was to live and fight under the extreme conditions of the aleutian islands.

Collaboratively researched and written by Donald M. Goldstein (a veteran of the United States Airforce and Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh) and Katherine V. Dillon (U.S. Airforce, Retired), The Williwaw War: The Arkansas National Guard In the Aleutians In World War II is a fascinating and informative history of the 206th Coast Artillery Regiment of the Arkansas National Guard in 1941, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed their lives forever and plunged America into a global war. Deftly following the travails and experiences of these brave servicemen who struggled with boredom, extreme weather conditions, and life-or-death battles, The Williwaw War reveals a time of danger, death, and pride in the regiment. The Williwaw War is an appreciated and commended contribution to academic Military Studies collections in general, and World War II military history buff reading lists in particular.

This is book worth reading because it incorporates for the first time in any published book the unpublished and uncompleted manuscript on Amelia and her disappearance entitled "Flight into Yesterday, the Amelia Earhart Enigma" by Laurence Safford, CPT USN (Ret). Safford was a famed cryptographer and a US Navy Intelligence Officer who gained fame for his role in intercepting Japanese codes prior to Pearl Harbor and for his insistance that Roosevelt and others had received the decoded "East Winds Rain" message signifying the imminent attack by the Japanese.

They also include for the first time in any book, significant information provided by Earhart researcher John Luttrell.

The book by Goldstein and Dillon makes good use of both Safford's manuscript and Luttrell's information and correspondence, but also incorporates several mistakes that Safford and Luttrell made and their (Goldstein and Dillon) book should be read with an awareness that it is not the final authority and that there are other books published concerning Earhart's disappearance that should be read for a balanced opinion of any conclusions. Those would include "The Search for Amelia Earhart' by Fred Goerner, "The Sound of Wings" by Lovell, "Amelia Earhart, The Mystery Solved" by Long and Long, "Amelia Earhart, The Final Story" by Loomis with Jeffrey Ethell, and "With Our Own Eyes, Eyewitnesses to the Final Days of Amelia Earhart" by Campbell with Thomas E. Devine.

(...) As soon as I started to read this book I couldn't set it down. It was really and truly inspirational, it shows you don't have to be a man, to do something thats considered a man's job, all you need, is determination and to have your heart in soul in it... but most of all do it for fun, do it becasue you love it! I read a lot of books and I know that you always have something to say or a lesson you get out of the story. Out of this book I've gotten knowledge of women heroes, of women leaders, and it also showed me to do what i want to do, when I want to do it, because you will regret it later. That's why I gave this book review 5 stars and 2 thumbs up!!

What makes a person become a pioneer? What was it like to be the FIRST PERSON to fly solo from California to Hawaii? The 1930's were a time very different from ours, but people still have to reach for the best within themselves. This is were this book reaches new ground. The authors have stripped the layers of myth away to reveal the wonderful and gifted human being that Amelia created. Trusted and respected author/historians Goldstein and Dillon (those wonderful folks who gave us the Pearl Harbor books, Photohistories of D-Day and Battle of the Bulge,etc) turn their trained and impartial eyes on this most enigmatic person. (The book has extensive notes and a bibliography). Amelia believed a women's place was equal to that of a man's, in not only aviation, but in all areas of American life.

Photos and more photos, that's what you have in this book. There must be a thousand of them, but I didn't count them.

This book takes the reader by the hand, in a bit of elementary school field trip fashion, and literally walks through Operation Overlord. The text is not over anyone's head, and always relates to the photos. The photos then tell the story, along with the captions which point out interesting, easy to overlook, details. It's almost like reading three books at once, the text, the photos, and the captions. But it's very educational and entertaining.

You'll see every form of naval lading craft ever used. Planes, guns, ships, you name it and they have a picture of it in this book. Allied personnel, and German personnel, all called "Antagonists", the title of the first chapter. There's even a great picture of General Patton inspecting a P-51, without a Helmet!

The book is wonderfully organized and laid out. It reads very quickly, despite all the bouncing around you'll do between pictures, captions, and text. Every photo is marked in the text at it's proper location. When the author talks about Churchill, then there is a note to look at the picture of Churchill. It's actually fun, if such a grave subject can be fun.

Read, or look at, this book. It's amazing how you'll begin to see the events, machines, people in a much clearer light. The massiveness of the event will become clear, and the images will tell you the story. If only all the D-Day photos were in one volume.....

The book does a credible job of providing a history of the events and people that led up to the invasion, as well as the invasion itself. But its real strength is as a pictorial history and resource. In this arena it is unsurpassed!

I approached this book thinking that it would yield insights into how and why the United States was so poorly prepared for the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. It seemed appropriate in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, to see if the United States had failed to learn from the past and had thereby condenmed itself to a repeat.

What I found between the covers of "Verdict of History" was a thick skulled and fatuous account that, in a nutshell, said "this stuff just happens, and no one is to blame". As anyone who read "The Valor of Ignorance" (Homer Lea), "Strategy", by Lidell Hart, the writings of Thucydides (a successful ancient Greek General) or other books on military strategy and the nature of warfare realized, the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet was predictable -- and in fact was first discussed in military and political circles as a likely event as early as 1905.

The author [...] asserts that Roosevelt's administration was not derelict in exercising its duty or responsibility to defend the United States, and then he provides hundreds of pages of text indicating that they were (At Dawn, They Slept ... and in the afternoon and evening as well, apparently). Mr. Prange seems to have done a great deal of research but learned absolutely nothing from it. Regrettably, that's par for the course with academic writers.

[...]

I'm a big fan of 'At Dawn We Slept' and 'December 7, 1941,' the first two books in Gordon W. Prange's Pearl Harbor trilogy. 'Verdict of History,' in which he shifts his focus from 'what happened' to 'why it happened,' however, is more troubling. Prange himself died before the publication of his trilogy. The work was finished by his two co-authors, Goldstein and Dillon, and so I'm tempted to hold them responsible for the things I find most disappointing in this volume.

Part of the problem is the title, which I hope Prange himself didn't have a hand in. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn sagely pointed out in 'Liberty or Equality,' the verdict of *history* and the verdict of *historians* are two (often very different) things. I would hope a historian of Prange's skill would not be so presumptuous as to claim to speak for all history. The opinions of talented historians are valuable. But relatively few judgments can ever be final (Henry Clausen's Pearl Harbor book has this problem in spades).

The larger issue seems to have been the release, after Prange's death, of John Toland's 'Infamy,' which breathed new life into the so-called 'revisionist' theory that Franklin Roosevelt knew of and/or deliberately provoked the attack. According to their introduction to this volume, Goldstein and Dillon deliberately expanded and refocused Prange's work in order to respond more thoroughly to the 'revisionist anti-Roosevelt thesis,' which they reject.

They concede that Roosevelt 'might have been ill-advised' or insufficiently 'dynamic' in his leadership. But their central thesis is the mainstream one that Pearl Harbor was due to sub-standard naval and military intelligence systems and failures by the on-scene commanders.

In the end, though, Prange is at pains to point out something that often is overlooked in the 'who do we blame' debate: the magnitude of the Japanese achievement. Pearl Harbor was a massive strategic undertaking -- one the Imperial Navy executed nearly to perfection. Students of the attack do well to remember that attention rightly focuses on the Japanese side of the equation as much as on the American.

I've read a lot of Pearl Harbor history, and recommend Stinnett's recent 'Day of Deceit,' which I think is the most important piece of new Pearl Harbor scholarship in some time. But I readily admit I don't believe anyone has all the answers yet. Prange's seminal work (the sum of his three volumes) is an important part of the dialectic that presents arguments and interpretations and helps us get a clearer picture of what really led up to the Day of Infamy.

Over the years, there has developed a "revisionist" group of historians who claimed FDR Knew in advance about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor and he did nothing to stop it. In this excellent book by Gordon Prange, this somewhat questionable viewpoint is thoroughly destroyed. One of the revisionists' claims is that the radio stations on the West Coast were able to track the Japanese fleet due to their radio signals. This is impossible, since the Japanese fleet NEVER broke radio silence, and, in fact, had their transmitters removed from thier radios all together. Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who led the attack, also said that "the force maintained the strictest radio silence throughout the cruise". Revisionists also believed, according to Prange, that if the Japanese task force would have been discovered, it would have turned back. Again, this is not true. The Japanese hoped to attain surprise, but if they were to have been discovered, they were prepared to fight all the way to Pearl Harbor to deliver their attack. What Prange attempts to achieve in this excellent book is who really was to blame? In this aspect, the War Department and the commanders, Kimmel and Short, are held responsible. Prange comes down hard on the War Department for failing to notify the commanders of the intercepted "bomb plot" message. This message, intercepted by "Magic", was transmitted to Japan by a Japanese spy. It broke Pearl Harbor into several sections, which, in effect, could be interpreted as a bombing grid. This information was not transmitted to Kimmel and Short, and could have proven invaluable. But the bulk of the blame appears to fall on Kimmel, Short, and the subordinate commanders. Kimmel and Short both grossly misinterpreted the "War Warning" message dated November 27, 1941, and sent to them by Washington. Short only alerted his troops against possible sabotage and maintained his training schedule. The War Department is also to blame here, because they failed to follow up to make sure Short understood the meaning of the message. Kimmel also failed to grasp the meaning of this message, and, unfortunately, communication between the army and navy was poor at best, so very little information was shared between the commands. One must also realize, and Prange makes excellent reference to this in the book, is that the Japanese placed tremendous amounts of time, thought, and training into this mission, and they must be credited with the success of the attack. America's belief of their huge superiority in both ships and personnel was totally destroyed. Prange also covers each of the resulting investigations fully and includes excellent testimony throughout the book. In summary, this is an excellent book about the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and does a good job of refuting the revisionists and acurately placing blame.