Dale Dye enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1964 and served in Vietnam, surviving 31 major combat operations. He emerged from Southeast Asia highly decorated, and rose to the rank of Master Sergeant before he was chosen to attend Officer Candidate School. Dye founded Warriors, Inc, the leading military consultancy to motion pictures and television, shortly after retiring from the Marine Corps and his firm has worked on more than fifty movies and TV shows, including several Academy Award and Emmy winning productions.

Professor Robert O'Neill served in the Australian Army, and has held a number of eminent positions in history circles, including Chichele Professor of the History of War at All Souls College, Oxford, and Chairman of the Board of the Imperial War Museum and the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. The author of many books, he is now the Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy and Planning Director of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes appeared from the clouds above Pearl Harbor and fundamentally changed the course of history; with this one surprise attack the previously isolationist America was irrevocably thrown into World War II. This definitive history reveals each of the major battles that America would fight in the ensuing struggle against Imperial Japan, from the naval clashes at Midway and Coral Sea to the desperate, bloody fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Each chapter reveals both the horrors of the battle and the Allies' grim yet heroic determination to wrest victory from what often seemed to be certain defeat, offering a valuable guide to the long road to victory in the Pacific.