Product Description

To be published in the 60th anniversary year of the infamous bombing of Pearl Harbor, Graveyards of the Pacific is Dr. Robert Ballard's compelling survey of the major WWII Pacific battlefields and graveyards including Midway, Guadalcanal, and Truk Lagoon. This authoritative overview of the Pacific war begins with a thrilling account of Ballard's search for an elusive midget sub sunk just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and ends with the American Nuclear tests on Bikini Island, where captured German and Japanese craft were scuttled. Featuring rare archival photographs, firsthand accounts of Ballard's explorations and the stories of survivors and eyewitnesses to the Pacific conflicts (gathered by National Geographic over the last year for this project), Graveyards of the Pacific is unique in the thoroughness of its coverage of the Pacific war. In this lavishly illustrated and definitive book, Ballard, a pioneering marine scientist and explorer best known for his discovery of the Titanic, has succeeded in recreating a defining period in American history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #522682 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

A flawed but fascinating account of the Pacific War.
'Graveyards of the Pacific', by renowned deep-sea explorer Robert D. Ballard, is an anthology of tales of the 1941-1945 Pacific War against Japan and told from a mainly U.S. point of view.

While the subject matter of this book is fascinating and the photographs, many in colour, are vivid and beautiful, the real failing of the book is, for me, the quality of the writing, with numerous lapses which include mis-labelled photographs and frequent repetition, giving the overall impression that parts of the book were not properly proof-read before publication. As an example of this I point to the story of the sinking of the light carrier USS Princeton, a photo of which, on page 218, carries a caption declaring that the Princeton was the last American carrier to be lost in World War 2. Yet, on page 222, and in total contradiction to this photo caption, the U.S. escort carriers Gambier Bay and St. Lo are sunk on the following day.

It's this sort of confusion and misinformation that mars an otherwise spectacularly-presented book, and leaves the reader with the impression that Dr Ballard and his writing partner Michael Hamilton Morgan were in direct competition with one another, rather than working in co-operation.

In summary, then, 'Graveyards of the Pacific' is something of a disappointment - well-researched but poorly presented, with evidence of rush and hurry throughout the text. This is a genuine shame because, when compared to the high quality of some of Dr Ballard's other works, this book seems to have been completed quickly, to meet a tight deadline, and it suffers as a result.