Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan

This is a single-volume history of the United States war against Japan, written by distinguished history professor Ronald Spector, first published in 1985. I was aware of the reputation of Eagle Against the Sun for years before reading it because it appears on many reading lists I've seen for the Pacific war and is widely lauded as the best one-volume work on that topic. It definitely lived up to the hype with thorough coverage of almost every facet of the war with Japan.

Spector starts off with examining the American and Japanese "states of mind" in the prewar years, and discussion of Plan Orange, the overall U.S. strategy in the event of war with Japan. The central narrative is that of the Pacific war starting at Pearl Harbor and ending in Tokyo Bay. Interspersed within that narrative are three contiguous chapters on the China-Burma-India theater and thematic chapters on intelligence, code-breaking, submarine warfare, strategic bombing, and the sociological impact of the war on servicemen. The author draws from a rich variety of primary and secondary sources and includes a bibliographical essay at the end of the book that serves as an excellent jumping-off point for further study.

Macarthur does not fare well at the hands of Spector, nor do the American attempts at cohesion among their armed forces. Spector demonstrates how this lack of cohesion among different service branches, while shared by U.S. and Japan alike, was overcome on the U.S. side by superior administrative structure, industrial output and technology. Spector is also critical of U.S. decisions to split forces between southwest Pacific (Macarthur) and central Pacific (Nimitz), but also very capably gives us the big-picture reasons for these and all major decisions, including those reached at the big conferences among FDR, Churchill and other Allied leaders.

Already knowledgeable about the Pacific war, I was able to follow Spector's narrative despite the absence of maps, save for the insufficient ones inside the cover of Eagle Against the Sun. Had I needed to refer to a map, I have S.E. Morison's volumes on the Pacific, as well as the West Point military atlases. However, if a first-time reader on the Pacific War were to start out with Spector, they would be lost without prior knowledge of Pacific geography. Therefore, as well written as Eagle Against the Sun is, it is NOT sufficient to serve as an introduction to the war with Japan without supporting maps from other sources.

Great one volume blah blah blah, just get it and read! Dr. Spector is a credit to Johns Hopkins!

A book that investigates all of the planning and strategy that went into the war in the Pacific. Offers very few stories from the men who were actually fighting but that is not the aim of this book. This book is perhaps the benchmark for overall strategy books on the Pacific war. I would reccomend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the command structure in the Pacific.

Little can be stated that has not already been mentioned about this book. It is simply the best single book on World War II in the Pacific. I

As others have mentioned, Prof. Spector has produced one of the best one volume works out there on the Pacific War. This book gets my highest recommendation as an introduction to the Pacific War.