Written with the storytelling drive that made Jim Hornfischer's first two books award winners and word-of-mouth favourites, here is an indispensable work of narrative history by one of the most commanding chroniclers of the U.S. Navy in World War II.

The fight between the U.S. and Japanese fleets for control of the seas around Guadalcanal was the most ferocious and important naval campaign of the Pacific war.

In this, the first major account of this landmark struggle in two decades, Hornfischer narrates an epic tale, breathtaking in its spectacle, of naval combat unprecedented in its intensity. Off Guadalcanal, in seas that would become known as Iron Bottom Sound for the number of warships sunk in action there, three U.S. sailors would die for every marine who perished ashore. Based on three years of research, including interviews with veterans who have never spoken publicly before, essential new archival sources, and the latest scholarship, Hornfischer gives vivid life to the story of a nearly forgotten sacrifice, written on a canvas that is at once epic and deeply, poignantly human.

About the Author James D Hornfischer is a writer, literary agent and former book editor. He is the author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts, both widely acclaimed accounts of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II.