Excellent book about the period of the war where the situation was fairly balanced. ( )

'Definitive' is right!! This is THE book on Guadalcanal!! ( )

Military histories can be well written and informative but they're often out of balance. Richard Frank states at the outset that he will include everything of relevance so he looks at American and Japanese sources, tracing the battle from both sides. He covers the ground, sea and air actions, equipment performance, training, tactics, strategy, supply, the political context and psychology (the beliefs true and otherwise of participants about themselves and their opponents).
The picture that emerges is of Japanese dominance at sea(better training), rough equality in the air and American dominance on the ground. Interesting points are the full use by the Japanese of their effective "Long Lance" torpedoes from ships and aircraft while the Americans virtually throw away their great advantage in radar. The Japanese leadership high and low place too much faith in the "quality of the Japanese soldier" leading to the bizarre idea that he can fight almost without food (!), undertake 20 mile marches through impenetrable jungle and make successful bayonet charges against machine guns. They just can't believe that they can be defeated by Americans and a general hubris leads them to send too few units, do poor intelligence work and not press their advantage when they could have won the battle in it's early stages. Somehow the Japanese also missed the point that it was only necessary to shut down Henderson airfield, something they could have done fairly easily by gaining and holding firing positions without trying to occupy the whole island.
On the American side there was a deep lack of experience, especially in the navy, but superior supply and some occasional fine leadership (e.g. Vandegrift of the marines) let them stabilize the situation and eventually win. ( )