Any student of the Pacific war sees this book on used bookstore shelves. Since the older I get the more I am interested in stories of the war that aren't at the theater or battle level, I picked up a copy a year or two ago, but hadn't found a chance to read it yet. When I saw it in unabridged audiobook two weeks ago I picked it up, knowing I had some long car trips coming up.
I'm glad I did. Previously I just knew Manchester 
as the author of The Death of a President about the JFK assassination, and I may start looking for his other books now, as this was quite simply the best war book I have ever read. Similar to James Jones WWII, it is a former Marine's memoir, but it isn't just a story of what he saw - it is the story of his visit back to the sites of the World War II battlefields in the Pacific to try to exorcise his own personal demons. It's an intense book, and wel-organized, although you don't realize that till the afterword where the author explains that he deliberately didn't tell the story in chronological fashion.
