My Dad gave me this book saying it was one of his favorites (I think of recent reads, as opposed to all time). I'm admittedly a poor student of history, and should value it more, so I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about the the Philippines (I play bball with a lot of guys of Filipino descent at work) and about my Dad.

The book starts with some pretty gruesome atrocities, with a strong slant of "them versus U.S." which on the see-saw of parental political discussions always weighs strongly for my Dad, less so for me. It got to the point though where I really found it hard to keep pushing on, the fact that humanity often at its core is truly inhumane is not a revelation that bears too much repeating. In that way, this book reaffirmed my deep belief that war is failure, period. Across all borders.

Hampton Sides does allude to some American misdeeds as well, but eventually he shifts more to the actual men interred at the time, and their individual stories. Here is where I see my Father, he's a people person even more than a patriot; and I can see how these details of the soldiers and less-so the Filipno insurgents are what my Dad connected with. Also with the notion of rising up against seemingly insurmountable odds.

The personal anecdotes are likely what stayed with my Dad, from Mucci's exhortation to Edwin Rose's fog of war, to the friendly fire that claims Sweezy. Sides does a solid job painting many of the historical blips as real people, even in short order, which just served to underscore the real tragedy of the situation. In many ways, the toll taken though could have been so much worse, and that too I suspect my Dad appreciates...to have striven and survived...I suspect he wanted them all to live on, even if only on the pages of the book.

Seeing the photos of many of the men, not just the soldiers at the time, but the last series of those surviving in flesh as well as in text, the lines one their faces speak to their own deeply individual stories, that one can never truly know. But Sides turns in a diligent and detailed attempt to do so.