Customer Reviews

Guadalcanal: An American Story

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Author Carl Hixon showcases the World War II Battle of Guadalcanal as a dramatic six-month struggle with all the elements of drama that the war in the Pacific offered. Hixon takes up the story in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, then quickly zeroes in on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal as the U.S. First Marine Division is ordered to land a hastily planned amphibious assault in August 1942. Six months and many harrowing encounters later, combined U.S. forces sweep the last remnants of the formerly unbeaten Japanese army off the island. Guadalcanal: An American Story is a tribute to the heroism and hardships of those American army Gudalacanal veterans and reads with gripping compulsion from first page to last. Here revealed is the true face of war in the Pacific.

Guadalcanal, an American Story, takes a different approach than many of the other books on the battles for the control of Guadalcanal. The author approaches the story, not as a historian describing names, dates, motives and inconsistencies in the records, but as a story teller. He focuses almost entirely on the land battles from the United States point of view, reserving descriptions of the air and sea fighting to its impact on the land forces. I enjoyed this book. The author's approach moves the narrative briskly. I learned new information about the battles that were lost in the detail of other works. The writing is solid and rarely degenerates into the "US is great, the enemy is bad" rant into which other books fall. I recommend this book.

As an enthusiast of the Pacific campaign, I waited with great anticipation for the release of the book. What a disapointment! Although this work is interesting to read, it is flawed in that it draws heavily on secondary sources and repeats the same errors that have appeared over the years. Some primary sources are used but not enough to give this work four or five stars. Simply put, this is "warmed-over meatloaf." If you want an original, well-researched work, read Richard Frank's Guadalcanal or Michael Smith's Bloody Ridge.