My review of this needs revision; the initial form was uncharitable. I'll try to remember to update this. ( )

This is an excellent personal account of WWII experiences in the Pacific. Recommended for anyone interested in the subject. ( )

Great recollections of marine combat in the islands of the Pacific. ( )

This is my favorite World War II book. I have a hard time lumping it together with other battle diaries, and memories. Manchester is more lyrical, introspective, more litereary. This book is in a category all itself. Manchester brings to life the horrors of war in bloody, piss-caked, reality. The fear, the chaos, the gore, all those things missing in typical war diaries. Manchester puts it in, as it should be. It disgusts me that many people glorify war. (I put almost ten years in the army and i saw men glorify it a hundred times, and here at home the ignorant too quickly resort to it). I think everyone who ever suggets war should have thier faces rubbed in its stink. Manchester can help with that. But, on top of that manchester's insisghts and thoughts as he looks back on those days are poignant and i'll say again literary...marvelous. This is a commentary on the war in the Pacific covering battles that Manchester never saw as well as ones that he did participate in. It's different...its great. ( )

2467 Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, by William Manchester (read 14 Oct 1992) Manchester is a superlative writer, and the last chapter of this book had me emotionally over-wrought! One wonders how strictly accurate he is. But he undoubtedly had a hellish time on Okinawa. Despite extreme frankness, telling all the gore and obscenity of war, it was a tremendous reading experience. He revisited Pacific battlefields in 1978, and that is always a device in war narratives I appreciate. The war in the Pacific, ending when I was 17, was an astounding event which I am glad I missed. ( )