Why have I never heard of this book before? Great history of US and Japanese strategies in the South Pacific between Pearl Harbor and Midway battles. Lundstrom does a great job of telling the story from both perspectives. He details how the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy had their battles with both themselves and Combined Fleet to determine how the "Second Phase" of the war would go. On the American side, the competing ambitions of Marshall (US Army), King (US Navy), Arnold (US Air Force), MacArthur, Soviets, and British are also detailed. Lundstrom shows us how if the Japanese had difficulty deciding how to proceed with the war, the US had just as many problems. Just really enjoyed this book by a well-regarded historian on a period of the war that isn't discussed much. My big complaint (of the paperback edition) is that there's 4 small maps stuck in the middle of the book that detail how the Coral Sea battle progressed, but the narrative has already finished the Coral Sea battle by that point. Bigger maps and more often in the text would have helped me understand even more. ( )