December 1, 2010
Shaara wrapped up the Civil War trilogy his father had launched with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Killer Angels, then went on to his own series about World War II--all best sellers. Now that series is itself wrapping up with this fourth title, which centers on the flight of the Enola Gay. Buy wherever Shaara has fans; with a five-city tour.
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2011
Shaara wraps up his WWII series with a literal bang as all roads lead inevitably to the horror of Hiroshima. Turning to the war in the Pacific, he evokes the triumph and the tragedy of the final months of a long, grueling campaign to wear down and demoralize the Japanese. Zeroing in on the prolonged, brutal battle for Okinawa, Shaara interweaves a number of voices to advance the action on a variety of fronts. Told from the perspectives of combatants and military leaders, both American and Japanese, the resulting balanced overview lends historical authority to the gripping fictional narrative. While the island battle rages on, a different type of battle wages stateside as science, technology, politics, and morality clash and combine in a furious effort to develop and deploy the first atomic bomb. Plucking real-life figures directly from the pages of history and deploying them alongside fictional characters, Shaara whips up all the fury and the frenzy associated with the final days of the war. High-Demand Backstory: The previous three volumes in this series were best-sellers; expect no less for this extraordinarily evocative conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)