Utmost Savagery

Excellent account of this brutal watershed battle. The author provides a cogent strategic and operational overview before concentrating on the tactical situation that dominated three days of fighting between US Marines and Japanese Special Naval Landing troops.

In his book, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa, author, Joseph H. Alexander provides a very readable narrative history of the events prior to, during and immediately after this historic battle. The book is repleate with detail, perhaps at times too much detail. It is well written and provides a very good description of the various characters involved. The battle is presented primarily from the American perspective, although there is some limited narration describing the Japanese point of view. Understanble considering that there were few Japanese survivors to provide information from their perspective--an unfortunate result of their military culture.