The Sino-Japanese War of 1937 to 1945, which led to the Pacific War of 1941-1945, should be of great historical interest. It is therefore astonishing to see how little has been written about it in the West.

For that reason alone, this book is important. It is a detailed military history of that conflict, giving a wealth of detail on units, commanders, and organization on both sides. This is not easy information to find.

Regrettably, the book has quite a few flaws. Dorn was once aide to "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell and it shows. He fairly drips with contempt for the Chinese on almost all levels, with the notable exception of a few of the bolder Chinese generals and, curiously, the Communists. To be sure, the Chinese Army did not exactly distinguish itself in this war; but Dorn's attitude gets rather tiresome after awhile.

A second fault with the book is that the maps that accompany it are beautifully rendered road and city maps of China -- with very poor depictions of the actual movements of troops. The latter are simply arrows showing the Japanese moves and Chines countermoves, without any dates or unit identification. This means the maps are not terribly informative, except perhaps to show relative locations of place names. The latter are all given in the obsolete Romanization of Chinese names used at the time and are difficult to match with the Romanization of Chinese names used on modern maps.

A third fault with the book is that it ends on December 7, 1941, as if nothing of interest happened between China and Japan after that date. SO you'll find nothing on the Ichi-Go offensive of 1944.

Finally, Dorn deluges the reader with data on units and movements without ever bringing any coherence to it. There are rather detailed orders of battle in the appendix, but since no unit locations are given with it, it's not nearly as useful as one might hope.

Still -- and this is the sad thing -- you can't find anything better out there. I've tried.