Will I love In Harm's Way?

I was completely and totally captivated by this book. I read it in two sittings, and that’s only because I finally forced myself to go to sleep at 3 a.m. The only WWII book I’ve read that did not glamorize war. What these men went through was absolutely shocking. How Captain McVay was treated was abhorrent.

Anyone who is considering joining the US military should read this book; it will make you think twice, and not because of the sharks. 

Like many people, I heard about the USS Indianapolis in the movie Jaws during Robert Shaw's fantastic monologue. The memory of that scene and that story never left me, and decades later, I stumbled upon this book in a used bookstore. Written in a third-person voice and using all the tools of a fiction writer, the author spins a much stranger tale than a Steven Spielberg movie could ever be.

It is a fascinating and horrifying account of the greatest naval disaster in the U.S. Navy's history, caused by cascading foul-ups, miscommunications, and oversights in the final days of World… show more.

When the USS Indianapolis was sunk in WWII by a Japanese submarine the survivors expected that because they were overdue, U.S. search planes would find them within a day. The survivors, however, spent days in shark-infested waters in the Pacific under the searing sun by day and strength-sapping cold at night. Stanton brings the story to life by focusing on four survivors, including the ship’s Doctor and the ship’s Captain McVey. We feel their will to live and the pain they must endure.  

McVey was later court-martialed because he failed to have the ship zig-zag at night, but the author… show more.