Not quite up to the Civil War series

books:


	• Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th Newt Gingrich, William R. Forstchen Thomas Dunne Books, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 85 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Gingrich is improving as an author

I was hesitant to give a Newt "written" book another try after his first WWII book "1945". However, I was pleasantly surprised with this novel. It was a fast paced easy read. The size of the book and the easy text make it a good book to pick up and complete on the same airline flight.

Not quite up to the Civil War series

Gingrich and Forstchen are on a roll. Following up on their dazzling Civil War trilogy comes a trilogy surrounding the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. This trilogy asks "what if" Yamamoto had personally led the attack on Pearl. It is well crafted and well written and a darn good read. All that said, it lacks the bold swagger of the Civil War trilogy which read like a labor of love.

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Wrong Title

The Book should be titled -- Pearl Harbor; What if the Japs Launched Three Waves of Attack Aircraft? Some, probably many, readers and reviewers (published elsewhere and touting the book) are not familiar with the details of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and do not understand that the third and most damaging Jap aircraft attack described in the book is an intentional creation of the authors' imagination. The authors are also far to kind to Admiral Yamamoto's reputation. (I am expecting the authors to name a USN aircraft carrier after him in their next book in the series.) It is difficult to sort the fact from the fiction in this novel. The technical notes or prologue would be a good place to explain. Otherwise, well written, and should be helpful to high school and college students falling asleep during US History class as the instructor drones on and on. (I used the derogatory term Jap. The term was commonly used during WW II and many years thereafter and is still used by WW II Vets and the Chinese today; When Japan apologizes for their brutaility in China and Southeast Asia during WW II I'll consider my reducation.)

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Pearl Harbor

Facts need Checking

Mr. Gingrich's and Forstchen's book on Pearl Harbor is a good read, but there are quite a few factual errors that should not be there. Having Admiral Yamamoto lead the attack would have been like Admiral Nimitz being on one of the carriers at Midway. But since Yamamoto was close by during the Japanese operation at Midway, that premise at least had a posiblity. There were some 300 U.S. Army planes stationed in Hawaii, and at maximum 200 were destroyed or damaged in the first two Japanese attacks, to have only a few planes available to repel the Japanese third attack is unrealistic. This was only one of too many lack of attention to actual details that left me disappointed in the posibility of what an actual Japanese Third attack could have done in damage to U.S. forces there in Hawaii.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"A Thrilling Tale of the Attack That Marked America?s Darkest Day" ---W.E.B. Griffin President Franklin D. Roosevelt?s speech on December 8, 1941, lasted a mere six and half minutes. But his words and tone?in a monologue that would later be named the Infamy Speech?sent ripples into a nation and a world that continue even today. The historical implications that emerged from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were unprecedented, launching America not only into the depths of a dangerous war, but forever altering the safety and comfort of everyday living. December 8th became a day of speaking out publicly and declaring war; of action, battle, plotting, and victories. This date?s significance is resonant and profound as an indelible moment in American history.

Fresh from their series on the American Civil War, bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen now launch a new epic adventure by applying their imaginations and knowledge to the ?Date of Infamy??the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor covers the full spectrum of characters and events from that historic moment, from national leaders and admirals to the views of ordinary citizens caught in the chaos of war. From the chambers of the Emperor of Japan to the American White House, from the decks of aircraft carriers to the playing fields of the Japanese Naval Academy, this powerful story stretches from the nightmare slaughter of China in the 1930s to the lonely office of Commander James Watson, an American cryptographer, who suspects the impending catastrophic attack. It is a story of intrigue, double-dealing, the horrific brutality of war, and the desperate efforts of men of reason on both sides to prevent a titanic struggle that becomes inevitable.

Gingrich and Forstchen?s now critically acclaimed approach, which they term ?active history,? examines how a change in but one decision might have profoundly altered American history. In Pearl Harbor, they pose the question of how the presence of but one more man within the Japanese attacking force could have transfigured the war. More than a retelling, the book also serves as a potent warning, valid still today as an example of what happens when communications and understanding breaks down, and a nation is ill-prepared for the onslaught that might ensue.

A compelling, meticulously researched saga, Pearl Harbor is also a novel of valor about those who took part in this cataclysmic moment in world history. It inaugurates a dramatic new Pacific War series that begins with the terrifying account of the day that started it all. Praise for Pearl Harbor:

?A politician and a novelist, each an accomplished historian in his own right, are emerging as master authors of alternative history. In this ?what if? treatment of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen combine their talents to make the diplomacy as suspenseful as the combat, even for readers who know what happens next---or think they know. The authors? mastery of both the broad sweep of events and the details of naval war and military technology give their counterfactual scenarios an unusual degree of plausibility, concluding with a version of the Japanese attack that guarantees a fictional Pacific war even more terrible than the one that began on December 7, 1941.?
-- Dennis Showalter, former president of the Society of Military Historians

?The book is not only a great read, it is a fascinating historical story that applies today in Iraq as it did in the Western Pacific in the late ?30s and ?40s.?
---Captain Alex Fraser (Ret.)

?Gingrich and Forstchen have done it again. Building on their successful collaboration on their Civil War trilogy that so skillfully combined real history with fiction, they have with Pearl Harbor happily inaugurated another new series. You will not want to put it down, but when you finish you will look, as I do, with great anticipation to the next book.?
---Chief of Police William J. Bratton, Los Angeles Police Department "Masterful storytelling that not only captures the heroic highs and hellish lows of that horrific day which lives on in infamy---it resonates with today?s conflicts and challenges."
---William E. Butterworth IV, New York Times Best-selling Author of The Saboteurs

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