PREFACE: This is a book about the American experience of World War II. It is not designed to be a formal academic history, though every effort has been made to assure its factual accuracy. Rather, its essential purpose is literary in that it attempts to rescue from the erosions and abstractions of Time something of what Webster’s Dictionary, in the definition of “experience,” calls the “actual living through an event or events; actual enjoyment or suffering.”
An account of America's participation in WW II. The significant events and personalities of the campaign. Some chapters include Book 1: The road to war. To the edge of the abyss ; In the valley of indecision ; The undeclared war ; To the day of infamy -- Book 2: The turning tide. Pacific defeat and global strategy ; The heroism and economics of war ; Crisis and turning point in the Pacific ; A dangerous quarrel among friends ; The emergence of Eisenhower ; The end of the beginning -- Book 3: Flood tide of victory. Atomistic, organismic ; Preludes to the final assaults ; Overlord triumphant -- Book 4: The tragic triumph. The edge of triumph ; To the end in Germany ; To the end in Japan.