Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island

By John R. Bruning,

Book cover of Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island: The World War II Battle that Saved Marine Corps Aviation

Book description

On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in the south Solomon Islands into…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Reading this book was like a punch to the gut.

The emotional, mental, and physical battles our ill-equipped Marines faced while battling the Japanese on Guadalcanal comes to life in John Bruning's book. A breathtaking amount of detail was put into the second-by-second accounts of air battles and ground attacks.

This book impacted me on a level I wasn't prepared for and I was unprepared for the end.

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