During the early months of World War II, Winston Churchill maneuvered to get the U.S. involved in the war to save his country from German invasion. Roosevelt, scheming to lure Hitler into a casus belli, ensnared Japan instead, resulting in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War that followed. When the doomed U.S. garrison in the Philippines soon capitulated to the Japanese, the atrocities inflicted on the Filipino and American units that surrendered were portents for the inhabitants of Manila. The history chronicles the 1945 recapture of Manila largely from the perspective of the civilian population, which suffered horrific brutality from the Japanese, followed by destruction and heavy loss of life during the American assault. Individual stories are included of citizens caught in the crossfire between the tenacious Japanese defenders and American troops determined to seize the capital city while minimizing their own casualties, regardless of the cost in civilian lives. More than 175 photographs document the events described.

The World Reshaped: Fifty Years after the War in Europe looks at the way the world has evolved since the end of the Second World War. The book focuses on Europe, commemorating the end of the War and the seemingly inevitable transition into the Cold War; the break-up of the Soviet Union; and projections into the future. The contributions, each with their own perspectives, trace many of the dominant themes of the history of Europe of the last fifty years, and look forward to the next millennium.

“Illuminating.… An eloquent testament to a doomed city and its people.” —The Wall Street Journal In early 1945, General Douglas MacArthur prepared to reclaim Manila, America’s Pearl of the Orient, which had been seized by the Japanese in 1942. Convinced the Japanese would abandon the city, he planned a victory parade down Dewey Boulevard—but the enemy had other plans. The Japanese were determined to fight to the death. The battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized the civilian population, resulting in a massacre as horrific as the Rape of Nanking. Drawing from war-crimes testimony, after-action reports, and survivor interviews, Rampage recounts one of the most heartbreaking chapters of Pacific War history.

The reconquest of the Philippine archipelago (exclusive of Leyte), with detailed accounts of Sixth Army and Eighth Army operations on Luzon, as well as of the Eighth Army's reoccupation of the southern Philippines.

Highly detailed account of events in the Pacific during the winter of 1944 - 1945 After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which crushed Japanese naval power in the Pacific even more effectively than American naval chiefs were aware at the time, the U.S. moved against Japan to liberate the Philippines. Here, the carrier actions supporting these operations are told in detail. Through Admiral Samuel Morison's eloquence, the half-forgotten, far-off names of these Philippine battles come to life again, as he tells of the preliminary bombardments, the assaults over the beaches, and the land fighting for the islands and Manila, as well as of the countermeasures taken against the fanatical air attacks of the Japanese. Here too is Admiral Halsey's famous raid of Task Force 38 in the South China Sea, ranging from Formosa to Indochina. Of particular interest to sailors and landsmen alike is the chapter on the frightful typhoon of 18 December, 1944, in which three U.S. ships went down and over eight hundred lives were lost. Additional chapters tell the story of the three amphibious assaults on Borneo by Australian troops covered by the U.S. Navy; of submarine operations in the southwest Pacific in 1945; and of Captain Milton Miles's amazing U.S. Naval Group, China, which carried out cloak-and-dagger operations on the mainland for years and fought the last naval battle of the war with sailing junks.

General Douglas MacArthur's bloody campaign to defeat die-hard Japanese forces and liberate the Philippines “I shall return,” General Douglas MacArthur promised the Filipino people following the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Philippines in spring 1942. The people there believed MacArthur’s vow—and even Americans were stirred by his dramatic pledge. Now, two and half years later, MacArthur was ready to fulfill his promise--the liberation of the Philippines was about to begin. It would not be an easy campaign. The more than 7,000 islands of the Philippine archipelago were the key to taking down the Japanese Empire—and the Imperial forces were prepared to sacrifice every man and every ship to prevent MacArthur from regaining control of them. Covering both the strategic and tactical aspects of the campaign through the participation of its soldiers, sailors, and airmen, as well as its commanders, James P. Duffy leads readers through a vivid account of the nearly year-long, bloody campaign to defeat over a quarter million die-hard Japanese defenders in the Pacific theater. Return to Victory is a wide-ranging, dramatic and stirring account of MacArthur’s epic liberation of the Philippines.