THE FIRST TIME THAT I READ THIS BOOK I WAS IN THE SEVENTH GRADE. SINCE THAT TIME I HAVE READ IT EIGHT MORE TIMES. I HAVE NOW GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE AND TEACH HISTORY IN A HIGH SCHOOL. ALL OF EDWIN HOYT'S BOOKS ABOUT WWII ARE EXCELLENT. THIS BOOK IS AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF THE WRITING THAT WE HAVE COME TO EXPECT FROM THIS HISTORICAL WRITER. WHENEVER I GO INTO A USED BOOK STORE I LOOK FOR ANYTHING BY EDWIN HOYT.

Most people are unaware that the firebombing campaign of Curtis LeMay killed more people - the vast majority of them civilian - than both of the atomic bombings combined. LeMay himself said that if his country did not win the war, he would be tried as a war criminal.

Hoyt here alternates between accounts of the bombing missions, the evolution of their inciniary civilian bombing campaign, and the stories of families on the ground during the conflagration. He is in top form here, shedding a bright light on one of the darkest corners of the Pacific War, and it is both uncomfortable and unsettling. In particular, the chapter "Road to Hiroshima" will leave you with both a chill and a tear in your eye. The writing is clear and lucid, and eyewitness accounts are all cross-referenced. The book is short and will be read quickly, in just a day or two, but it is valuable for cross-referencing general histories in which the firebombing campaign is usually (shamefully) reduced to a single paragraph or less.

You will leave this book with a bitter understanding of the distilled trajedy that was the Pacific War, of the unchecked destruction and wanton slaughter that became not only expected, but as some would argue, necessary. That such killing could ever become justified is the lesson that we non-veterans must not just learn but know.

We must, as armchair historians, allow ourselves to see the practices and results of our great nation's military, so that we might learn from them and absorb whatever lessons we can from the honor and courage of the men who fought there... and, bitterly, the women and children who died there. We owe it to the participants as well as both of our countries as well as the generations of future children to preserve the stories of our victories, however phyrric they might be.

Edwin Hoyt has done a superb job of communicating these thoughts. If you have an interest in the Pacific War, this is recommended reading. Its a hardcover as well, so it makes a nice addition to your library. Thank you, Mr. Hoyt.

This is the first book I ever read on this subject and I was very impressed. This book does an excellent job at giving both a historical account of the various suicide attacks and exploring the mentality and strategy behind the suicide theory. The advantages and disadvantages of the different forms of suicide attack such as aircraft, submarines, boats, and piloted bombs are explored in detail. If you want to learn about the Japanese Kamikaze attacks at the end of World War 2, this is a good place to start.

This book describes adequately the last vestiges of the U.S. Pacific fleet in the Far East just before and during the early part of WWII. It is exciting and well-written, and follows a logical sequence. The only shortcoming I felt was a lack of maps in its pages. Add this one to your shelf on the Pacific War.

Ably written by former soldier and distinguished World War II historian Edwin P. Hoyt, The U-Boat Wars is a powerful and vivid rendition of deadly historical battles of the submarines (popularly referred to at the time as "U-Boats") that raged under the waters of the Atlantic during World War II. Anecdotes are drawn from German, British, and American naval archives richly and vividly present heart-pounding dramas of lethal conflict in a pivotal, undersea segment of a war between the Nazis and the Allies. Frightening in its pulse-pounding detail, The U-Boat Wars is a frank and riveting look at the role of the wartime submarine and men who sailed them into naval history.

The Voyage Of The Hunley: The Chronicle Of The Pathbreaking Confederate Submarine by military historian Edwin P. Hoyt is the fascinating story of the first successful submarine attack in history - an innovative triumph for which the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley paid the ultimate price as it was lost with all hands aboard, and not to be raised from the watery depths for another 136 years. A dramatic, insightful, and fascinating study of a turning point in naval military history, The Voyage Of The Hunley is a welcome and highly recommended contribution to Civil War Studies and American Naval History reference collections and reading lists.

Hoyt presents an engaging albeit superflous view of the Fuhrer's war. He effectively and interestingly narrates the history of the Third Reich from birth to death. Not an in depth study, but an excellent beginning.

An accomplished and highly respected historian in the field of World War II studies, Edwin P. Hoyt offers military buffs new insight to Adolf Hitler's leadership as commander-in-chief of Germany's armed forces in Hitler's War. From Hitler's early successes in Austria and Czechoslovakia, to his later failures in Russia and Normandy, we are treated to a cogent and informed analysis of the Fuhrer's motives, relationships with his generals, and the errors in judgement that were to collapse the German armed forces into total defeat on all fronts. Hoyt reveals that Hitler's skill in manipulating his officers and the German public was ultimate undermined by his obsession with exterminating the Jews and communists and set Germany on the irreversible road to defeat from 1942 onward....

"Stalin's War" is a strange yet in the end charming book about the Soviet Union during WW2. This book is an easy read and there aren't any pesky notes to bog down the reader. Its kind of like if your crazy war-buff neighbor down the street told you his version of what Stalin was thinking during WW2. As the book goes on you can see the conflict between hero-worship and demonization coming to life in the pages. In the end I think this book is actually fairer than most current popular history because try as he might to avoid it the triumph and might of Stalin and the Red Army can't help but show through. Stalin bravely stayed in Moscow when the Germans were 30 miles away- we're reminded over and over. Stalin outfoxed the "naive" Americans and the conniving Churchill over and over again. We learn what the dead John Reed would have thought of Stalin from his crypt in the Kremlin wall. In the end this book can't help itself and the logic of Stalin's war is revealed- anyone who thinks that the Americans were going to enter Berlin first is delusional; does anyone really think we would have gone up against the Red Army with its blood up? Does anyone really think Stalin or any other Russian leader could have allowed a "free" eastern Europe after the impotence of Poland and the Czechs and the collaborationist hijinks of the Hungarians, Rumanians and Bulgarians? Thankfully in this whole book there is but one reference to R. Conquest the propagandist refering to Stalin's "dark and deadly" nature. In a way the nature of the Cold War and its beginnings are impressionistically sketched but the feel of those times seems to come through better than in many mainstream "histories" out there. Strange and maybe even true!

Stalin's War: Tragedy And Triumph 1941-1945 by military historian and author Edwin P. Hoyt is a resolute examination of Communist dictator Josef Stalin's role in World War II, ranging from his ill-advised nonaggression pact with Hitler; to the deadly cost of the war itself; to the postwar creation of Communist puppet governments in Eastern Europe. An inset section of black-and-white photographs enhances this profoundly informative and highly recommended history of Stalin's influence in the World War II European Theatre and Post-War European political developments.

After reading this book, I have strong cause to wonder why no one ever made this story into a miniseries. It's the story of one man, a very Prussian colonel, and his odds and sods conglomeration force in a backwater country. That Odd Squad of never more than 14,000 total kept half a million British troops and support personnel tied up and tripping over themselves for over four years.

Despite the total nonexistence of support from home, Von Lettow-Vorbeck kept his troops in the field and the enemy running around in circles. The odd part is that this whole story was forgotten after the Versailles treaty except by the men who served there. Then again, since it's the winners who write history, maybe it's not so odd. This was the one part of the War that the Germans actually won.

The book itself does a decent job of telling the story. There are some cultural references and terms that grate, but political correctness was not even a gleam in someone's eye back in 1914. It has a good bibliography with it, of source materials that [except for one, a book by Von Lettow himself] are hard to find. The writing style is academic competent, not wonderful, but not bad.

It is definitely worth a read, especially if you are into guerilla warfare, World War One, or just plain good yarns.

This is one of the few books that really shines in documenting the Japanese strategy/politics from Meiji period to the end of WWII. The huge scope in this single volume limits the depth of details it can reach. However, it is detail enough for a general reference of all the events involved from Japanese's side point of view. Mr. Hoyt also takes an indifference approach to the subject matter. He not only lambast the rape of Nanking, rape of Hongkong but also General LeLand's bombing of Tokyo, which kills 200,000.

There are also some minor mistakes on this book that leaves a scar in my mind. A few examples:
1. The illustrations have a pictures of the "Betty" bomber. The legend say it is a Type 0 bomber. However, a "Betty" should be a Type 1 bomber.
2. In the middle of book, when he describes the Janpanese army's joke at the foreign minister by claiming him as the harm minister (because of the similar pronounication in Japanese), Mr. Hoyt misplaces the Kanji characters with his explanation. This makes the context and Japanese meaning of the character in opposite.
3. When he refers to the hanging of General Itagaki by the conviction of murdering of the old marshal, he uses Zhang Hsueh-Liang at the end of the book. However, Zhang Tso-Lin was the old marshal while Zhang Hsueh-Liang was the young marshal (Zhang Tso-Lin's eldest son). Surprisingly, he refers them correctly in the middle of the book when he is discussing the murder around in 1936.