The Context of History

THE GREAT PACIFIC VICTORY--Gllberf Cant--John Day ($3.50).

In The War at Sea and America's Navy in World War II, Correspondent Gilbert Cant reported the achievements of the U.S. Navy from the outbreak of war to the fall of Guadalcanal. The Great Pacific Victory completes the trilogy with an able, authoritative account of the up-from-the-sawdust resurgence of U.S. power in the war against Japan.

To most readers the single actions which measured off the tremendous campaign are household words--Kula Gulf, Saipan, Leyte, Okinawa--but they remain isolated incidents on the war's vastest and most unfamiliar battlefield. TIME Editor Cant has fitted these battles into the context of comprehensive, coherent history. The battle narratives are packed with detailed descriptions of the forces involved, the missions assigned to each, the complex of pressures which determined the outcome. At the same time, Cant points out the needs which governed the course and timing of U.S. operations.

In his judgments on the countless bitter controversies which studded the Pacific war (Was the cost of Tarawa inevitable? Was it necessary to conquer Iwo?), he is determinedly fair. As a historian, his concern is more with events themselves than with the exploits of individual heroes. But he has included his estimates of the men who bossed the top Pacific commands: Nimitz, Spruance, Mitscher, Halsey. He has also included some of the best of the old Pacific war sagas. One of them: 18 Lightnings racing out from Guadalcanal's Henderson Field to bushwhack Admiral Yamamoto in the air over Jap-held Bougainville.

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