theBaron
Major
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2008
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- 10,327
Recommend Gordon Prange's At Dawn We Slept, been at for a while but quite good. This was the expanded book of his earlier Tora, Tora, Tora, that was made into the movie. Prange was a highly regarded historian. I did not have the honor of attending his history classes while a student at University of Maryland, but I believe Lancer/Al may have. Chris
That is correct, Chris. Had the privilege of being in his classes on WW1 and WW2 for 4 semesters back in the early 70's. Pearl Harbor was an almost 4 decade long study of his, but a study he was unable to bring to print before his death in 1980. His manuscripts on Pearl Harbor (and other subjects, Midway and Sorge) were published after death. There are 3 titles involving Pearl Harbor: "At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor"; "December 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor"; "Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History". Prange had formatted his study to be in four volumes, but the edited version is the 3 mentioned books. I believe the 4th volume was to have been about the whole question about whether FDR might have had knowledge of the impending attack, but this volume was severely edited down and now is included in the Verdict of History volume. At any rate, the 3 books by Prange cover the subject quite well and are unlikely to be surpassed due to the unique sources Prange had access to and the years of investigative study Prange put into them. -- Al
Oh, Al and I are way ahead o'ya, Chris! He and I discussed Prange's books earlier in this thread. "At Dawn We Slept" is one of the books that I re-read once a year, as well as "Miracle at Midway." The only criticism I can think of is that he was a little too trusting of Fuchida as a source. The "fatal five minutes", for example, have been refuted pretty well by Parshall and Tully, and his own countrymen very quietly disregarded his accounts over a generation ago.
Willmott's book is entertaining, but not really new, just that he places the events in the broader context of Japanese history. I haven't started the Pearl Harbor "truther's" book yet.
In the meantime, I've also picked up and started re-reading Frederick Forsyth's "Day of the Jackal".
Prost!
Brad