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Also by Evan Thomas:

Being Nixon, June 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Ike's Bluff, October 2012
Hardcover / e-Book
Playbook 2012, December 2011
e-Book
Playbook 2012, November 2011
e-Book
The War Lovers, May 2010
Hardcover
A Long Time Coming, January 2009
Hardcover
Sea of Thunder, November 2006
Hardcover
The Very Best Men, October 2006
Paperback
John Paul Jones, May 2004
Paperback
Robert Kennedy, September 2002
Paperback
The Wise Men, June 1997
Paperback

Sea of Thunder
Evan Thomas

Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945

Simon and Schuster
November 2006
On Sale: November 7, 2006
472 pages
ISBN: 0743252217
EAN: 9780743252218
Hardcover
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Historical

Evan Thomas takes us inside the naval war of 1941-1945 in the South Pacific in a way that blends the best of military and cultural history and riveting narrative drama. He follows four men throughout: Admiral William ("Bull") Halsey, the macho, gallant, racist American fleet commander; Admiral Takeo Kurita, the Japanese battleship commander charged with making what was, in essence, a suicidal fleet attack against the American invasion of the Philippines; Admiral Matome Ugaki, a self-styled samurai who was the commander of all kamikazes and himself the last kamikaze of the war; and Commander Ernest Evans, a Cherokee Indian and Annapolis graduate who led his destroyer on the last great charge in the last great naval battle in history.

Sea of Thunder climaxes with the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle ever fought, over four bloody and harrowing days in October 1944. We see Halsey make an epic blunder just as he reaches for true glory; we see the Japanese navy literally sailing in circles, torn between the desire to die heroically and the exhausted, unacceptable realization that death is futile; we sail with Commander Evans and the men of the USS Johnston into the jaws of the Japanese fleet and exult and suffer with them as they torpedo a cruiser, bluff and confuse the enemy -- and then, their ship sunk, endure fifty horrific hours in shark-infested water.

Thomas, a journalist and historian, traveled to Japan, where he interviewed veterans of the Imperial Japanese Navy who survived the Battle of Leyte Gulf and friends and family of the two Japanese admirals. From new documents and interviews, he was able to piece together and answer mysteries about the Battle of Leyte Gulf that have puzzled historians for decades. He writes with a knowing feel for the clash of cultures.

Sea of Thunder is a taut, fast-paced, suspenseful narrative of the last great naval war, an important contribution to the history of the Second World War.

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