The brutality and otherworldliness of the fighting seemed more immediate. Listeners who have been waiting for the conclusion of Toll's masterpiece will be thrilled by this final volume.Īs with the two prior volumes I felt I was experiencing the Pacific war through the eyes of the Americans and the Japanese. Lionel Barber of the Financial Times chose the second volume of the series ( The Conquering Tide) as the preemiment book of 2016, calling it military history at its best. Toll's narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also takes the listener into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided. Twilight of the Gods is a riveting account of the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the US Navy won the largest naval battle in history Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized in atomic blasts. Toll, 'one of the great storytellers of war' (Evan Thomas). The War of 1812 helped to define America's sense of itself, and that would not have happened without the construction of Six Frigates.The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. It is also worth noting, as Toll does, that “it was only after the War of 1812 that Americans began speaking of the United States in the singular rather than the plural”.

After 1815, the United States moved themselves out of the status of 'bloody colonials' and were recognized as a power to be reckoned with. The United States, by it's naval victories and dogged insistence that it would not give in to being pushed around by anyone, won the respect if not the admiration of the powers of Europe. Toll's narrative covers the political, economic, social and technical challenges that faced shipbuilders, sailors, captains and congressmen that managed the development and operation of the fleet.įrom the last chapter: “What was remembered and cherished about 1812, above all, was the fact that America's tiny fleet had shocked and humbled the mightiest navy the world had every known.” This was the most significant outcome of the War of 1812, which is often overlooked by Americans and British alike.

The navy grew as the country grew, by fits and starts, by rising to challenges (The Barbary pirates, Britain and France) and learning from mistakes. Begun in the shadow of the British Royal Navy that was thought to be unbeatable, the American Navy faced challenges of every kind. Starting in the Adams administration and continuing through to the end of the War of 1812, Six Frigates is a well researched and very readable history of the Navy of the United States.

Six frigates by ian w toll