Jeffrey Cox is fast becoming one of my favorite military history authors (alongside Antony Beevor, David Stahel, John Mosier and Phillips Payson O'Brien). He's not a professional historian (as he freely admits) but he seems eminently knowledgeable about his subject matter. And perhaps because he's not a professional historian, he doesn't write like one. His writing is designed to be read. It flows easily and carries the reader through the story (occasionally even veering into snark). This tale is about a very narrow slice of WW2: the Japanese military's advance southward between December 1941 and March 1942 and the Allies' well intentioned but haphazard attempts to halt, or at least delay, Japan's advance. This is mostly a naval story, though there is some discussion of operations on land. Cox finds fault with both Japanese and Allied strategic and operational planning and with the leadership of Douglas MacArthur and Arthur Percival (no surprises there). But Cox has high praise for British Admiral Tom Phillips, who commanded the Prince of Wales and Repulse to their doom, and Cox is quite forgiving of much-pilloried Dutch Admiral Karel Doorman, analogizing his fighting of the Battle of the Java Sea to that of the Spartans at Thermopylae. The heroes in Cox's tale are (not surprisingly) the Allied sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines who waged a campaign they all surely knew was ultimately futile.