Sterling, 2001, $29.95 ($44.95 Canada), ISBN 0-304-35884-3, 224 pages, 10" x 9 7/8" hardback

What an absolutely gorgeous book! Three cheers for the art department for an amazing array of photos, wonderful maps, and spectacular illustrations of the attacking waves and targets. Like the recent movie, it's all very visual. Unlike the movie, the content's pretty good, too.

Willmott contends the war started in 1931, not 1941, when Japan conquered three of Manchuria's four provinces in Mainland China. The consequent advance across China in the intervening decade, closer ties with germany and Italy, and the ever-constricting economic sanctions are succintly stated and provide an exemplary lead-in to the attack.

As for the actual attack, Willmott continues his terse descriptions of the flurry of torpedo, dive bomb, and strafing actions, conveying the relative absense, but steadily increasing, defense in the first wave, and the determined US resistence of the second wave. Willmott effectively deals with the midget submarines and the decision against a third wave, while portraying American confusion with some sympathy.

Pearl Harbor is a cut above the usual coffee table book. There's not a lot of text--you can read it cover to cover in two hours--but it offers a succinct summary of events. The photos and maps are the stars of the book. If the Disney movie helps kindle interest in the Pearl Harbor attack, Wilmott's book is a great follow up.