After completing his trilogy on World War II in Europe (The Rising Tide; The Steel Wave; No Less Than Victory), Shaara turns his considerable talents to the war in the Pacific. His new book begins with the invasion of Okinawa and the long, terrible, and incredibly bloody campaign to subdue the island, which is garrisoned by nearly 100,000 Japanese all willing to fight to the last man. The book ends with the cataclysmic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan's final surrender. As with his previous historical novels, Shaara uses real people as his protagonists and develops their characters in a manner that is extremely plausible and realistic. Generals and admirals from both sides are portrayed, as are the grunts, who do the actual fighting. Incredibly, Shaara even portrays Japanese survivors of both Okinawa and Hiroshima. Verdict Like his father, Michael, the author of the classic Civil War novel The Killer Angels, Shaara has mastered this half-fact, half-fiction historical genre. His "novels" are not only educational but also very readable. Highly recommended; fans will eagerly await a new trilogy on the Civil War, followed by a book on Korea. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/10; five-city tour; library marketing.]-Robert Conroy Warren, MI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Shaara wraps up his WWII series with a literal bang as all roads lead inevitably to the horror of Hiroshima. Turning to the war in the Pacific, he evokes the triumph and the tragedy of the final months of a long, grueling campaign to wear down and demoralize the Japanese. Zeroing in on the prolonged, brutal battle for Okinawa, Shaara interweaves a number of voices to advance the action on a variety of fronts. Told from the perspectives of combatants and military leaders, both American and Japanese, the resulting balanced overview lends historical authority to the gripping fictional narrative. While the island battle rages on, a different type of battle wages stateside as science, technology, politics, and morality clash and combine in a furious effort to develop and deploy the first atomic bomb. Plucking real-life figures directly from the pages of history and deploying them alongside fictional characters, Shaara whips up all the fury and the frenzy associated with the final days of the war. . High-Demand Backstory: The previous three volumes in this series were best-sellers; expect no less for this extraordinarily evocative conclusion.--Flanagan, Margare. Copyright 2010 Booklist