Book Suggestions

[AggonyDuck]

I'm looking for books about the Pacific War, the Naval Arms race preceding WWII and books about the War in the Mediterranean. (Especially the naval part of it)

Anyone have any good suggestions of good books that go into detail about these things?

[edyzmedieval]

Big books or small ones, like www.ospreypublishing.com ?

[Atilius]

For the Pacific War, I have a few recommendations:

Samuel Eliot Morison's 15 volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II is the standard work. It appears that the whole thing can be had from a very, very large online bookseller for a bit more than $200 (used?), and individual volumes (new) for about $13. His book Two Ocean War is a summary of the magnum opus. Morison was present on the bridge of the flagship during some of the actions he describes.

A more recent work is Richard B. Frank's Guadalcanal. This book obviously doesn't cover the entire war. However, the campaign for Guadalcanal lasted for 9 months and included 2 of the war's 5 great carrier battles as well as most of the war's furious night-time naval actions.

Finally, the quirky Victory at Sea by James Dunnigan and Albert Nofi, while not truly a history of the Pacific war, analyzes a wealth of nuts and bolts issues like what made an aircraft carrier most effective and contrasts US production and logistics with the Japanese.