Whereas Band of Brothers did a fantastic job covering fairly familiar ground (Normandy invasion, Battle of the Bulge, liberating a concentration camp), The Pacific covers small battles in faraway places that have been only told sparingly – and even the movies on Iwo Jima and Midway are often aging, b-level fare from the 50s and 60s. And, importantly, The Pacific only covers four campaigns – Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu and Okinawa.  The Pacific war was sprawling and complex, and a 5o-part series would still leave out huge chunks of the story.

As a military history junkie, here are a few books that I’ve read about the subject – and if you enjoy The Pacific, give ‘em a try.

• Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie and With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge. Naturally, the foundation for the miniseries would be a good place to start.  I read these about five or six years ago thanks to some savvy Amazon recommendations, and I’ve re-read them in recent months.  They are exclusively a private’s perspective on the war, which is somewhat rare, as most historical accounts start from the commander’s point of view. They are also two very different books.  Leckie’s account is more literary and cerebral; Sledge relies on a more sparing and matter-of-fact style.  But they are both invaluable first-hand accounts on how war brings out the absolute best and the absolute worst in people.
• One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle for Tarawa by John F. Wukovits.  This is one that I picked up in an airport, and it just was an engrossing read. If you were shaken by the carnage of the Peleliu scenes from The Pacific, the Tarawa battle is more of the same.  This account explores different angles of the battle, from the commanders on the ground (on both sides) to the plight of the individual soldiers in the field.  It also delves into the lives (and deaths) of combat photographers and journalists.  Highly recommended.
• The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornsfischer. Before I picked up this book, I knew precious little about the naval battle off Samar.  It sounds like an unbelievable Hollywood script. A group of lightly armed US destroyers and escort carriers – mostly providing ground support and submarine screens for a Marine landing force – run up against (and ultimately repel) a squadron of huge Japanese battleships and cruisers.  In fact, one Japanese battleship itself outweighed the entire US fleet that it opposed.  Sometimes, the US boats were saved because the heavy Japanese shells went completely through the thin armor, leaving only holes – but not exploding.  It’s a bizarre, desperate battle, and the book reads like a gripping fiction novel. Yet, it was entirely true.  It’s absolutely amazing.
• Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway.  If you really, really, REALLY want to geek out on some WWII history, this is the book for you.  Shattered Sword is a heavy-duty account of the pivotal Battle of Midway, with an almost “turn by turn” retelling of every move of every ship involved.  Brilliantly researched and chock full of details, this book will allow you to crush anyone who spouts commonly accepted Battle of Midway trivia they’ve picked up from history textbooks and movies.  The bad news is that you will be that guy who knows waaaaaay too much about that topic. If you enjoy it, definitely don’t admit to it in a blog or anything.  Oops.
• Weller’s War: A Legendary Foreign Correspondent’s Saga of World War II on Five Continents by George Weller.  A great book on wartime journalism. George Weller spent the vast majority of World War II covering the conflict from places like Greece, Iraq and New Zealand. His accounts of the out-of-the-way Pacific locales (often news stories filed “on the scene”) are stunning.  It wasn’t just the US who was routed in the Pacific; Dutch and British soldiers were fighting it out in faraway places like Singapore and Burma.  Mainstream US writers haven’t covered these locations too extensively, and to get a compilation of these superbly written dispatches makes this a worthwhile read. I’d recommend it to anyone who has dual interests in journalism and history.

Happy reading!

For example, during the Abu Ghraib fiasco, I re-read All the President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein. Of course, the ultimate outcome of W.’s scandal was not as eventful as Nixon’s constitutional comeuppance, but it was interesting to take a look at an insular White House in action when things go wrong. I also remember seeing a documentary about Robert McNamara – Kennedy and Johnson’s secretary of defense – where he said that if we had known more about Vietnam’s culture and history, we may have made drastically different approaches to that war.

(I also finally read Primary Colors during the Lewinsky scandal, but that was just a sadistic pleasure. Trust me, I knew what I was getting into, but, like watching Pink Floyd’s The Wall or SpongeBob SquarePants while baked, it only made a good time that much better.)

Anyway, I just finished reading The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. Somehow, this book had just slipped past me for a few years, primarily because I always end up reading about other eras. My dad – a history teacher, so you’ll know where I get this trait – recommended it. This is the story of the people who stayed in the midwest during the Dust Bowl era of the mid-30s (as opposed to the “Okies” that set out for California, famously chronicled in The Grapes of Wrath).

What struck me about this book is that it’s non-fiction that chronicles a time that was so without precedence that it read like fiction (a man-made natural disaster that on several occasions deposited thousands of tons of dust on New York and Washington – think about it!). In a blog, I can’t do the book any justice – this review from the New York Times is a good synopsis – but here are a few of the things from this book that just lingered with me.

• This was a man-made disaster. We did this, and Mother Nature just took us behind the dust-covered woodshed for the better part of a decade. Essentially, humans thought we could turn the grasslands of the Midwest into a vast farmland for grain. Acres and acres of soil was turned up, robbing the land of the grass. When a drought hit, and the winds came, we got dust storms, “black blizzards” and a general ecological fustercluck of biblical proportions. That’s not hyperbole. Biblical proportions. They got locusts at one point, for Chrissakes (because the locust’s primary predator got wiped out in the drought). I always knew the Dust Bowl was bad, but didn’t know it was this bad.
• A follow-up … we arrogant humans actually believed that this farming would have a positive effect on the ecosystem – “rain will follow the plow,” they said. There were a lot of warning signs here, but we chose to ignore them for purely economic reasons. Somehow, that comes to mind whenever one of my Rush Limbaugh-loving friends starts spouting some half-truths about the scientific “confusion” about global warming. Their “confusion” is only a thinly-veiled attempt to retrofit facts to their beliefs. I worry that a hard rain’s a-coming. Or not coming. Whatever. Bad things, man.
• The effect of this event on the people of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, Kansas, and other areas was just incredible. Kids died – by the thousands – of “dust pneumonia.” Parents tried to keep the ever-present dust out of their dugouts or homes by spreading wet sheets over windows, but it just permeated everything. It filled the lungs of the young and old, and they died in droves. The stories of death and destruction of everything – including the most innocent victims – was just stunning.
• How this event tied in with the Depression was also a compelling subplot. I thought about this a lot this week as the 24-hour news channels were hyperventilating with talk of a coming recession. We’ve all have some impressions of the Depression – 25 percent unemployment, widespread displacement, the guys in suits selling apples on street corners. But, The Worst Hard Time, talks about its impact on the poorest of the poor in the Midwest. People were rioting because their kids were starving. Again, that puts things into context.  Americans only 70 years ago… rioting because of widespread starvation. Somehow, the next time Maria Bartiromo begins to look a little panicked because GM’s stock is off a couple of points, I’ll have a little more perspective.

And, for a look at history within the context of another piece of history, I got the From the Earth the Moon TV miniseries for Christmas (a look at the US moon landings of the 1960s). I would sometimes watch these episodes before or after knocking down a chapter about the Dust bowl. That always made me feel a little better.

Why? In the 1930s, the US was reeling from a Depression and an ecological disaster. People still farmed with horses or mules. Indoor plumbing was still not a de facto standard. Three decades later, one of us is standing on the moon. The course of human progress can be breathtaking. That’s why I read these things. To compare one era to another (or to the present). Every so often you hit a comparison that just turns readjusts your view of reality. That’s something that fiction – even the best fiction – rarely does.

Happy reading folks. I’ll be back writing about my hatred of Duke or other inane stuff at some point.