( 2 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 29 2008
Frankly speaking I have given it a very quick screen. This is one of the books I bought for my summer holiday(which has not started yet:). Looks like something very promissing and I just cant wait to start reading it.
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( 5 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 28 2005
During World War II a lot of good men rose to the top from relatively low levels when the war started. Arleigh Burke started the war as a commander on shore duty at the Washington Navy Yard, also known as the Naval Gun Factory. His superior officer refused to let him go. Eventually he got orders to go to the South Pacific, it had been twenty years since he had graduated from the Naval Academy. From there his career skyrocketed. Twenty years younger than Nimitz/Halsey he was the most famous Naval officer in active service after the war. He eventually became Chief of Naval Operations under Eisenhower. He was the CNO for an unprecedented six years. The author of this book served in the Navy during World War II, and afterwards was a civilian faculty member of the Naval Academy. His biographies of Nimitz and Halsey won numerous awards and was selected by Burke and some of his friends as biographer. Admiral Burke, by then unable to read because of failing eyesight, listened to the book as it was read by his wife and assisted in the correction of errors. This book is well written and brings interesting insight not only to the story of World War II, but of the political happenings afterward when Truman wanted to unify the services in an attempt to do away with the inter-service rivalry.
