Your Midway Research Compendium.
Today marks the eighty-second commemoration of the Battle of Midway, which has provided material for lots of authors, whether as participants, reporters, or serious scholars. We've called attention to a number of those books over the years: Midway, The Midway Campaign, The Unknown Battle of Midway, Shattered Sword, No Right to Win, and Never Call Me a Hero.
This reviewing season's Book Review No. 7 is Peter C. Smith's Midway, Dauntless Victory: Fresh Perspectives on America's Seminal Naval Victory of World War II (on the cover it looks like subtitles en echelon, fitting either for a combined air operation or an academician) and the book is clearly in the academic style. If you prefer your footnotes on the same page as the text, that is what Mr Smith and Pen and Sword Maritime, a British publisher, serves. The first appearance of each major figure, whether warrior, writer, or public official, comes with a footnote offering a biographical sketch including, as applicable, postings or engagements of relevance. There are some pages that evoke the legendary Torah scrolls with one verse at the top of the page and commentary filling the rest of the space. I approve!
Dauntless Victory might be more useful to an experienced student of the Navy and the battle. It's written by a professor (of health policy, no less) and the writing style is not always sparkling. On the other hand, it's as good a round-up of revisions to the historical record, of which there are many, and it includes, in addition to the commentary on the existing written record in English, summaries of reaction of the era from the other military powers, including, for what it's worth, a few kopeks and Pfennigs from the landlubbers embroiled in Middle Europe at the time. A concluding appendix calls attention to the many errors in popular reporting and in film (the 1976 Midway has a "pathetic politically correct and totally irrelevant love-story sub-plot," for instance) which is useful to know. That noted, if you're watching that movie, it had pretty good Sensurround and when it premiered, audiences were prone to applause as each of the Kido Butai carriers had their close encounters with those victorious Dauntlesses. A more recent Midway movie appeared after Dauntless Victory was published. There might be elements of that movie to fact-check once you've finished your reading.
Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.
This reviewing season's Book Review No. 7 is Peter C. Smith's Midway, Dauntless Victory: Fresh Perspectives on America's Seminal Naval Victory of World War II (on the cover it looks like subtitles en echelon, fitting either for a combined air operation or an academician) and the book is clearly in the academic style. If you prefer your footnotes on the same page as the text, that is what Mr Smith and Pen and Sword Maritime, a British publisher, serves. The first appearance of each major figure, whether warrior, writer, or public official, comes with a footnote offering a biographical sketch including, as applicable, postings or engagements of relevance. There are some pages that evoke the legendary Torah scrolls with one verse at the top of the page and commentary filling the rest of the space. I approve!
Dauntless Victory might be more useful to an experienced student of the Navy and the battle. It's written by a professor (of health policy, no less) and the writing style is not always sparkling. On the other hand, it's as good a round-up of revisions to the historical record, of which there are many, and it includes, in addition to the commentary on the existing written record in English, summaries of reaction of the era from the other military powers, including, for what it's worth, a few kopeks and Pfennigs from the landlubbers embroiled in Middle Europe at the time. A concluding appendix calls attention to the many errors in popular reporting and in film (the 1976 Midway has a "pathetic politically correct and totally irrelevant love-story sub-plot," for instance) which is useful to know. That noted, if you're watching that movie, it had pretty good Sensurround and when it premiered, audiences were prone to applause as each of the Kido Butai carriers had their close encounters with those victorious Dauntlesses. A more recent Midway movie appeared after Dauntless Victory was published. There might be elements of that movie to fact-check once you've finished your reading.
Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.