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8+ verk 2,620 medlemmar 69 recensioner 4 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

James D. Hornfischer, an American literary agent, naval historian and author, was born in Massachusetts in 1965. He attended Colgate University, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and graduated in 1987. He received his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, and visa mer is a non-practicing member of the State Bar of Texas. Hornfischer, a former editor at HarperCollins, is currently a literary agent, representing non-fiction authors in a myriad of subject areas. Hornfischer's lifelong interest in the Pacific Theater during World War II led to his writing numerous books on the subject. His titles include: Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts. He also co-wrote Service: A Navy Seal at War with Marcus Luttrell, the author of Lone Survivor. Hornfischer's title The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 made the New York Times bestseller list in 2016. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre
Foto taget av: Historian James Hornfischer at the 2016 Texas Book Festival. By Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53296731

Verk av James D. Hornfischer

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Service: A Navy SEAL at War (2012) 289 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1965-11-18
Avled
2021-06-02
Kön
male
Nationalitet
USA
Bostadsorter
Austin, Texas, USA
Utbildning
Colgate University
University of Texas (JD)
Yrken
editor
agent
Organisationer
Naval Order of the United States
HarperCollins
Kort biografi
A native of Massachusetts, and a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Texas School of Law, Hornfischer is a member of the Naval Order of the United States, the Navy League, and was appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry as an “Admiral in the Texas Navy.” A former New York book editor, Hornfischer is president of the literary agency Hornfischer Literary Management, located in Austin, Texas, where he lives with his wife and their three children. 

Medlemmar

Recensioner

The book hits it's stride about 100 pages in and doesn't let up from there. The stories of courage and daring are so amazing if it were a novel it would seem over the top. Great history telling.
 
Flaggad
dhenn31 | 23 andra recensioner | Jan 24, 2024 |
Excellent account of the bloody and brutal naval actions off Guadalcanal. Thoroughly readable and loaded with information. Hornfischer was a master of naval combat accounts. I have read many of the books that cover all or part of this material and recommend them his title unhesistatingly.
 
Flaggad
Whiskey3pa | 22 andra recensioner | Jan 9, 2024 |
With their chances of winning WW2 quickly waning, Imperial Japan hurls one last Pacific offensive against the US at Leyte Gulf. Devising a three-prong attack with top and bottom feints designed to draw US ships away from the center, Japan nearly pulled off a dramatic victory. Against all odds and logic, the center held. This story draws the focus of WW2 down to that center offensive through the San Bernardino straight—where dramatically over-matched US forces stymied what should have been overwhelming forces. There is some well-handled big picture stuff, but the guts and glory of this book is the staggering amount of detail about the American “oil can sailors” and their fate. Once it gets rolling the narrative will take your breath away. Shifting perspective from ship to ship during the course of the battle could have made the book uneven but the tempo never slows.So much is going on, and clearly related, that I kept being stunned when given a time check reminding me almost everything was happening within a 6am to 8am window. Because of the often staggering amount of detail, kept having flashbacks of the first time I saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and their assault on Omaha Beach. Even a watered down filming of this could have the same effect. If you love the sea and history, how people and rise and fall confronted by hell, then grab a copy of this and pull up a deck chair.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
KurtWombat | 23 andra recensioner | Oct 15, 2023 |
James Hornfischer was justly esteemed as a naval historian and his analysis of the Marianas Campaign is up to his best work. Where I think this book is somewhat less successful is when Hornfischer decides to address the end game in the Pacific War, which the campaign was fought to facilitate, and examine the American strategic bombing assault against Japan, culminating in the use of atomic weapons.

Hornfischer concludes that the psychological mindset of the Japanese leadership was the ultimate center of gravity in the war, justifying the use of the worst weapons we had available to break the deadlock that paralyzed the Japanese government's power of decision. In some ways I'm more convinced of this argument than I might have been, say, ten years ago, as I've become much more aware of weaknesses of the Meiji State that allowed the Japanese military to arrogate too much authority. Still, there are times when Hornfischer doesn't seem like he convinces himself with his own argument, as accepting the principles of Total War is an acceptance of the overthrow of all the restrains that aim to maintain proportionality; sometimes ugly is just ugly.

However, I also think those who argued that Hiroshima was really the opening shot of the Soviet-American Cold War, and that this foreclosed a better relationship with Stalin were/are kidding themselves; though that's an argument for another day. Still, to give those folks their due, I have to accept that there's an element of the U.S. government sleep-walking their own way through the decision making process which sticks with me from all that I've read about it. The American choice to use atomic weapons was as riddled with second guessing, sloppy thinking, and self-serving careerism as the Japanese process of avoiding national suicide. This is a long-winded way of saying that FDR was derelict in preparing Truman to preside over the final decision, and even if the right decision was ultimately made, it is not very satisfying. Overall, I still prefer Richard Frank's "Downfall" as an examination of the 1945 endgame, though Hornfischer takes into account Harold Bix's "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan," which ascribed much more political culpability to the Japanese sovereign than had been done previously. I suppose I'm arguing that another parallel examination of American and Japanese decision-making processes might be in order; hopefully Richard Frank completes his new trilogy about World War II viewed through the filter of the Sino-Japanese war.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Shrike58 | 7 andra recensioner | Dec 24, 2022 |

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Statistik

Verk
8
Även av
1
Medlemmar
2,620
Popularitet
#9,799
Betyg
4.2
Recensioner
69
ISBN
42
Språk
1
Favoritmärkt
4

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