A Glorious Page in Our History: The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942 [Perfect Paperback]

Robert J. Cressman (Author), Steve Ewing (Contributor), Barrett Tillman (Contributor), Mark Horan (Contributor), Clark Reynolds (Contributor), Stan Cohen (Contributor)

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 226 pages
• Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub Co; 1st edition (June 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0929521404
• ISBN-13: 978-0929521404
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #199,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Battle of Midway researchers: start here., February 24, 2005

By 

R. W. Russell "midway42.org" (Lodi, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Glorious Page in Our History: The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942 (Perfect Paperback)

. This is THE definitive work on the Battle of Midway. It accurately provides the detail that most of the others omit or get wrong, and it corrects all of the popular myths about the battle that some of the others perpetuate, i.e. the controversial flight of the USS Hornet's air group on the morning of 4 June 1942, and the "Midway is short of water" ruse pulled off by the signal intelligence wizards at Pearl Harbor.
. You have to be very familiar with the events and personnel involved in the battle to find even a minor flaw in this book. This reviewer knows of only two (in the 4th printing, March '98); one photo caption cites the wrong PBY squadron and another has the wrong names for an SBD aircrew. Beyond that sort of miniscule nitpicking that very few would notice, "A Glorious Page" can be relied upon as meticulously thorough and accurate to a level that no other volume on the Battle of Midway approaches.
. If you are researching the battle, start here. And if you can only afford one book on the Battle of Midway, this is the one you want. (Reviewed by R. W. Russell, Battle of Midway Roundtable, www.midway42.org)

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Glorius Page..., June 14, 2006

By 

Fredric Pierce (Huntington Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Glorious Page in Our History: The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942 (Perfect Paperback)

There's not much doubt about the exhaustive detail of this book. It's about as close as you are going to get to a blow by blow account of the most important battle in US Navy history. The authors recount virtually every movement that any ship, squadron, or commander made in those 3 crucial days. Although the detail is minute, I couldn't put it down. The battle was apparently, a continuous stream of action.

This book is really for the dedicated historian and hardcore history buff. It isn't really intended to be a good read, but it sure was for me. The writing style is easy and flowing, not as dry and dusty as you would expect from a history book.

The story really focuses on the men. It is full of pictures of the flyers, commanders and squadrons. There are only a couple small weak points. One is the poor quality of the printed pictures. This is not an expensive book, so it is printed on medium quality paper. Photos don't turn out very clear on this kind of paper. Several captions describe details in the photo that I can't for the life of me see. Still the picture collection here is huge. It was especially touchng to look at the faces of these great heroes. They look like ordinary guys. I guess they were. It impresses me that ordinary guys are capable of rising to such high levels of dedication and valor.

The other problem is the lack of good maps. There are only 6, and they aren't very high quality. The 3 battle maps are given on only 2 pages, and contain too much information to make much sense. I would have prefered more larger maps showing more specific phases of the battle. I tracked down some better maps on the internet, but the data in this text could be used to produce many more detailed maps.

The book starts witb an interesting brief history of Midway atol, itself. Such an important place, and yet it is just a couple of tiny piles of sand literally in the middle of nowhere.


Altogether, I can highly recommend this book if you want a lot of detail in an easy-reading style.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly informative, superbly illustrated, first class book, July 29, 1998

By 

Tim Lanzendörfer ([e-mail]) (Wiesbaden, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Glorious Page in Our History: The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942 (Perfect Paperback)

There have been numerous accounts of Midway, to mention just two, Walter Lord's wonderful _Incredible Victory_ and Fuchida et al's _Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan. Each of these is superb in its own right, but what the collaborative effort of these writers had turned out is certain to rank not much from the top of the list. There are probably more illustrations in this one book than in the others combined, and the fine text clears up many points in which earlier accounts were mistaken. By tracing the history of Midway from its first U.S. occupation until much after the battle itself, a nice framework is given into which the battle is set; and in its own right, what the writers termed their book's appendix, is a superb collection of Midway-related essays that alone would have made me spend my money.