Jeff Shaara's "The Final Storm" takes history that many of us know well, whether from living it (my dad);studying it (me); or watching films and series about World War II (the younger generations). What makes his book so astounding is the level of personal detail he adds, so that a worldwide catastrophe hits the reader in the gut with the connection to his characters.

He moves from the top brass of the Navy, Army, and Marines, to the grunts in the trenches. The assault on Okinawa looked from the first day as if it would be a clean sweep when the Japanese did not attack the forces as they landed. From history and from the interwoven chapters from Japanese General Ushijima, we know the strategy is to lure the marines into the hills where they will be attacked from a warren of hidden caves.

Shaara is adept at putting his reader into the foxholes with grenades and shrapnel flying by. He recreates the stench of the battlefield on the tropical island as the days go by and it is too dangerous to recover the dead. He reproduces the anger and the futility of the constant charge up the mountain into enemy fire, with the enemy approaching at night, shooting into foxholes and stealing supplies. The calls in accented English of "doc" and "Hey Joe" add an eerie helplessness.

Yet the marines did not quit. The island was taken. The fight took months and thousands of lives.

At the end of the book, Shaara looks at the flight of the Enola Gay and the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He visualizes Truman's debates with himself, and allows the reader to see the how the war was ended after so many lost their lives in search of or in defense of national honor.