To the End of the Earth

Description

From the liberation of the Philippines to the Japanese surrender, the final volume of John C. McManus’s trilogy on the US Army in the Pacific War

The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus’s magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” returns with this brilliant final volume. On the island of Luzon, a months-long stand-off between US and Japanese troops finally breaks open, as American soldiers push into Manila, while paratroopers capture nearby Corregidor. The Philippines are soon liberated, and Allied warlords turn their eyes to Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Japanese home islands themselves. Readers will walk in the boots of American soldiers and officers, braving intense heat, rampant disease, and a by-now suicidal enemy, determined to kill as many opponents as possible before defeat. At the same time, this outstanding narrative lays bare the titanic ego and ambition of the Pacific War’s greatest general, Douglas MacArthur, and the complex challenges he faced in Japan’s unconditional surrender and America’s lengthy occupation.
 John C. McManus is a military historian and award-winning author of twelve previous books, including September Hope and The Dead and Those About to Die. He holds a PhD in American and Military History from the University of Tennessee, where he served as Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of War and Society. He is currently a full professor of U.S. Military History at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he teaches a variety of courses, including one on World War II and another on the Modern American Combat Experience.US