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michael5000's review against another edition
3.0
For as great as the reputation of this account of Midway is, I found it a little disappointing. Whether talking about Big Strategy, or the tactics of WWII naval warfare, or even the lived experience of the men caught up in the fray, Lord writes as if he assumes you already know all about it. And that's true, in a way; probably almost everyone who reads this book knows how it's going to end and why it's important. But, especially as we get further and further from the 1940s, it's harder to have the sense of what it really looked like, felt like, ~meant~ for some kid from Iowa to pilot a dive bomber against a Japanese aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Lord tells us what happened and in what order, skillfully and from an admirably diverse range of points-of-view, but the experience doesn't really come to life. As for death, it is handled with such delicacy and consideration that it hardly seems like a significant part of the event.
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