"A chronicle of the horrific final year of the Pacific war. By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan's defeat was inevitable, but how the victory would be achieved remained to be seen. Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the key figures--MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors--American, British, Russian, Chinese,...

"From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II--intelligence--showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome."--Amazon.com.