The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 is a masterful history that encompasses the heart of the great Pacific war, when a “conquering tide” of Allied air and sea power supported the U.S. Marines in reclaiming thousands of Japanese-held islands on the road to Tokyo. It was the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative and logistically complicated amphibious war in history, and the complexity of it fostered bitter interservice rivalries. Ian Toll's story is propelled and colored by firsthand accounts—letters, diaries, debriefings, and memoirs—that are the raw material of this magisterial narrative.
Ian Toll is the author of Pacific Crucible and Six Frigates, winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award and the William E. Colby Award. He lives in San Francisco and New York.