100 Books Like So Long for Now

Before I began to read this book, I knew it was about the men who raised the stars and stripes atop Mt. Suribachi, a photograph of which became an iconic image of the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Pacific War. Indeed, the book meticulously conveys the story of the six flag raisers, men who were representative of the U.S. Marines and those who fought at Iwo Jima.

Their lives are fascinating in themselves. But as I discovered, the book is much more. It a gripping account of the Battle, where the Americans sustained more casualties than the Japanese, a moving tribute to the courage, valor, and camaraderie of the Marines, and a thorough exploration of myths surrounding the flag raising and its effects on the flag raisers.

The Mosquito Bowl was a football game between two Marine regiments that was played on Christmas Eve 1944 on Guadalcanal. Only one brief chapter is devoted to the game itself, which, as one reviewer noted, “is both a pretext and an organizing principle for the book.”

Bissinger tells the stories of several of the players, many of whom were from big-name schools. The players came alive as I learned about their families and upbringing, achievements on the gridiron, how they became Marines, and their wartime experiences. I was reminded of the sacrifices their generation made. I cared about them and hoped they would survive the bloodbath at Okinawa, where fifteen of the players in the Mosquito Bowl were killed.

Brokaw’s book popularized the term “Greatest Generation” for those who came of age during World War II. The book consists of stories of some 50 men, women, or couples who were representative of this generation. Some stories are of  “famous” people, such as George Bush, but most of them are about ordinary people who “were not widely known outside their families or their communities.”

Reflective of this generation, these people interrupted their lives to answer the call to serve, got on with their lives when the war was over, were proud of their service, but rarely talked about the war years. Although aware of challenges to Brokaw’s general portrayal of this generation, I was inspired by the accomplishments of these people and believe they measure up to his label.

Of the books I have read consisting of collections of World War II letters, this is the best. The significance of mail during the war cannot be overestimated. Mail was a morale booster for the troops and a lifeline between loved ones at home and those on the war front. A massive number of letters—in the billions—were transmitted.

Charles and Barbara’s letters cover over four years in their lives, from August 1941 to November 1945. Mail sustained their relationship when they were often separated during their courtship and early years of their marriage, and during the 18 months that Charles was in Europe. Through their correspondence, I learned about the private lives of ordinary people caught in the sweep of history.

Though less well known than Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed or Richard Tregaskis’ Guadalcanal Diary, this is one of the finest memoirs of World War II and one of the few by an enlisted sailor. At his death at 94, Alvin Kernan was a recognized expert on Shakespeare with long years on the faculties of Yale and Princeton but in 1940 he was a seventeen-year-old boy from the mountains of Wyoming who enlisted in the Navy because he was unable to meet a small cash fee connected to his college scholarship. 

Kernan was aboard the carrier Hornet when it carried Doolittle's Raiders to Tokyo,  during tthe Battle of Midway and when it was lost during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942. He served aboard two other aircraft carriers and advanced from ordnance-man to aerial gunner and chief petty officer. His descriptions of the dramatic… show more.

Edward P. Stafford’s superb “biography” of the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CV-6) captured my attention two years after publication in 1962 because the ship was at war from Pearl Harbor onward. 

I read and re-re-read my paperback copy from high school onward, including a cross-country train trip. It is so well written that Stafford’s style imprinted itself in my subconscious. Thereafter I came to know dozens of “Big E” aircrews and sailors leading up to my own history of “The Fightingest Ship” in 2012.  

Ed Stafford and I agreed that the world needs a new Enterprise book every 50 years!

Published ten years apart (1984 and 1994), John Lundstrom’s two-volume set was well worth the wait. 

His first installment set an exceptionally high bar with minutely detailed analysis—often including cockpit-to-cockpit matchups—of U.S. and Japanese aerial encounters. Volume One rightly peaks with the vital Battle of Midway in June 1942, while the second covers land and carrier-based operations at Guadalcanal from August to November.

Both volumes place the combatants in the context of time and place including their institutional backgrounds. With numerous veteran contributions dating from the 1970s, neither book could be written today.

I love this book for at its heart this is a story of the average American sailor waging war in the Pacific during World War II.

As an author of naval history, I understand it is all too easy to get bogged down in the writing about motivations of top commanders and the newest advances in military weaponry. Tillman successfully walks the thin line in telling the individual stories of the sailors of the Enterprise and how this single vessel fits into the greater campaign of the U.S. Navy against the Empire of Japan.

This book demonstrates that detailed military scholarship can retain a human face. 

I love an underdog story, and this book tells the story of a small, desperately outnumbered U.S. fleet facing down a much larger Japanese force off Samar during World War II—perhaps the ultimate underdog tale, with life-or-death stakes.

I broke down in tears at multiple points reading this book, a true account of absolute heroism in the face of overwhelming odds. This is one of the very best nonfiction World War II books I have ever read. It’s exhaustively-researched and detailed, but is not in any way boring—it reads like a vintage Tom Clancy novel.

The US Navy at war in the Pacific is the backdrop to a series of high-pressure decisions made by various officers in command. The most striking is the heroic attack of a group of lightly armed US destroyers against the main forces of the Japanese Imperial Navy in the battle of Leyte Gulf. The so-called “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” and the heroism in particular of Commander Ernest Evans, a Native American who receives the Medal of Honor for his decisions in the battle. I’ve always been awestruck by Evans, who was a quiet, thoughtful man who had to make the hardest choice literally “to risk it all” to achieve his mission.