Afternoon Of The Rising Sun

October 1944: The Batle of Leyte Gulf was the greatest battle in naval history, with over 250 vessels involved, yet its outcome depended on the nerve of a handful of sailors and the opposing commanders. 32 photos. 20 maps.

Naval Warfare 1919–45 is a comprehensive history of the war at sea from the end of the Great War to the end of World War Two. Showing the bewildering nature and complexity of the war facing those charged with fighting it around the world, this book ranges far and wide: sweeping across all naval theatres and those powers performing major, as well as minor, roles within them. Armed with the latest material from an extensive set of sources, Malcolm H. Murfett has written an absorbing as well as a comprehensive reference work. He demonstrates that superior equipment and the best intelligence, ominous power and systematic planning, vast finance and suitable training are often simply not enough in themselves to guarantee the successful outcome of a particular encounter at sea. Sometimes the narrow difference between victory and defeat hinges on those infinite variables: the individual’s performance under acute pressure and sheer luck. Naval Warfare 1919–45 is an analytical and interpretive study which is an accessible and fascinating read both for students and for interested members of the general public.

Complete account of airborne operations in the Pacific theater. Firsthand descriptions from American and Japanese paratroopers. Detailed maps illustrate battles.

“[Tully] paints Admiral Nishimura's high-speed run into history with an entirely fresh palette of detail.” —James D. Hornfischer, New York Times–bestselling author of Neptune’s Inferno Surigao Strait in the Philippine Islands was the scene of a major battleship duel during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Because the battle was fought at night and had few survivors on the Japanese side, the events of that naval engagement have been passed down in garbled accounts. Anthony P. Tully pulls together all of the existing documentary material, including newly discovered accounts and a careful analysis of US Navy action reports, to create a new and more detailed description of the action. In several respects, Tully's narrative differs radically from the received versions and represents an important historical corrective. Also included in the book are a number of previously unpublished photographs and charts that bring a fresh perspective to the battle. “By giving a fuller view of the Japanese side, Tully's work forces a substantial revision of the traditional picture of the battle. Battle of Surigao Strait is not only military history based on scrupulous use of a plethora of new source materials, but is a spanking good read. Highly recommended.” —War in History “Tully has managed to trace the complicated flow of and reason for events on the nights of 24-25 October with a skill and aplomb that forces one to reconsider previously held views.” —Naval History

This “important comprehensive study” of WWII in the Pacific examines the high-level decision-making and strategy that led to victory (Roanoke Times). Once the stories have been told of battles won and lost, most of what happens in a war remains a mystery. So it has been with accounts of World War II in the Pacific, a complex conflict whose nature is often obscured by simple chronological narratives. In The Pacific War, William B. Hopkins, a Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific war and respected military history author, opens the story of the Pacific campaign to a broader and deeper view. Hopkins investigates the strategies, politics, and personalities that shaped the fighting. His regional approach to this complex war conducted on land, sea, and air offers an insightful perspective on how this multifaceted conflict unfolded. As expansive as the immense reaches of the Pacific, and as focused as the most intensive pinpoint attack on a strategic island, Hopkins’ account offers a fresh way of understanding the hows—and more significantly, the whys—of the Pacific War.

By the summer of 1945, Adm. Bull Halsey’s U.S. Third Fleet had fought its way far enough in the Pacific that its carrier-based fighters could launch attacks on Japan itself in preparation for the invasion of the home islands, planned for the fall of 1945. This mission U.S. Navy fighters, fighter-bombers, dive-bombers, and torpedo-bombers—Hellcats, Avengers, Helldivers, and more—carried out with a vengeance, striking airfields, industrial targets, and coastal facilities while flying into the teeth of Japanese air defenses. Meanwhile, the fleet’s aircraft continued to attack the Japanese navy (sinking a submarine from the air, attacking—but not sinking—the famous battleship Nagato, and attacking other ships), interdict enemy merchant shipping, and defend against kamikaze attacks on Third Fleet. As late as the morning of August 15—the day the ceasefire took effect (before the formal signing on September 2)—the fighters saw hard fighting, downing Japanese fighters making last-ditch, almost literally last-minute attacks on the U.S. fleet. Numerous books have covered the American bomber war against Japan in World War II, from the Doolittle Raid to Curtis Lemay’s strategic bombing campaign, the firebombing of Tokyo, and the dropping of the atomic bombs. But other than memoirs and bit parts in air war histories, fighter and fighter-bomber operations have received short shrift. Setting the Rising Sun corrects that oversight, zooming in on fighters during the war’s final two months. In this carefully researched narrative history, Kevin Mahoney recounts this vital period of the Pacific War with drama and attention to detail. He draws on both American and Japanese perspectives to reconstruct intense combat missions and place them in the context of a war that was hurtling toward its conclusion in two mushroom clouds in Japan.

Jaime Manrique has been named the recipient of the 2019 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by the Publishing Triangle Like This Afternoon Forever has been named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction "The author's sixth novel weaves together a series of murders and the story of two gay Catholic priests who become lovers." --New York Times Book Review, "Globetrotting," April 2019 "A seasoned and venerated writer, Manrique sets his newest novel in his native Colombia, to reckon with the 'false positive' scandal, in which the military lured unsuspecting civilians to their deaths and then presented the bodies as defeated insurgents in order to inflate their victories...Manrique's elegant prose anchors this explosive storyline to the intimacy of love...Another excellent novel by a master storyteller." --NBC News, included in 10 New Latino Books "Jaime Manrique's new literary novel of love and murder is based on a shocking (and little-reported in US media) crime--up to 10,000 poor and mentally disabled Colombian citizens were lured to remote areas of the country by the Colombian military, murdered, then presented to superiors as 'guerilla fighters' to inflate casualty numbers, in what's been dubbed the 'false positives' scandal. In Like This Afternoon Forever, two priests already forced to hide their forbidden love come across evidence of widespread government violence." --CrimeReads, included in the Most Anticipated Crime Books of Summer 2019 "Jaime Manrique's dreamy Like This Afternoon Forever...tells the story of two gay priests against the backdrop of drug cartels in Colombia." --Kirkus Reviews, included in Radha Vatsal's "Beyond Nordic Noir: On International Crime Fiction" column "Against the backdrop of guerrilla warfare in Colombia, two young men fall in love while studying to become Catholic priests. Manrique, a recipient of Colombia's National Poetry Award as well as a Guggenheim fellowship, weaves into his story the 'false positives' scandal, in which members of the Colombian military sought to drum up the number of guerilla fighters they'd killed by murdering and misidentifying innocent civilians." --Publishers Weekly, included in LGBTQ Feature "Manrique's drama of a dangerous love affair in a world of blood, terror, displacement, and desperation grapples with profound and persistent conflicts." --Booklist For the last fifty years, the Colombian drug cartels, various insurgent groups, and the government have fought over the control of the drug traffic, in the process destroying vast stretches of the Amazon, devastating Indian communities, and killing tens of thousands of homesteaders caught in the middle of the conflict. Inspired by these events, Jaime Manrique's sixth novel, Like This Afternoon Forever, weaves in two narratives: the shocking story of a series of murders known internationally as "the false positives," and the related story of two gay Catholic priests who become lovers when they meet in the seminary. Lucas (the son of farmers) and Ignacio (a descendant of the Barí indigenous people) enter the seminary out of a desire to help others and to get an education. Their visceral love story undergoes stages of passion, indifference, rage, and a final commitment to stay together until the end of their lives. Working in a community largely composed of people displaced by the war, Ignacio stumbles upon the horrifying story of the false positives, which will put the lives of the two men in grave danger.