Prior to reading this latest work by Martin Dugard my knowledge base around the battle of Midway was largely from watching the two movies that centered on the subject; one in the 1970s with an all-star cast with Henry Fonda playing Admiral Charles Nimitz, and the 2019 remake with the Admiral played by Woody Harrelson. (both are good but I liked the recent one the best)

Dugard is an interesting writer, very different from conventional biographers and historians. He uses choppy and sometimes incomplete sentences that most English teachers would dislike. His fiction counterpart might be Lee Child and his long running Jack Reacher series. But to me Dugard is adept at taking complicated subjects, breaking them down into a series of vignettes, and combining these to create a story.

Such is the case with Taking Midway. The book is filled with all sorts of interesting (to this reader) stories that make up the history of the Midway Atoll which was the sight of the first major conflict after Pearl Harbor in which American naval forces surprisingly scored a major victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy that would ultimately pave the way for victory in the Pacific war theater.

Taking Midway is a story about the many heroes who were able to break the Japanese intelligence codes to enable a victory against long odds, as well as a tribute to the many hundreds of heroes who gave their lives to ensure the liberties we have today.

There is a lot of detail about the many different planes, ships and weapons used by both sides in the conflict that reached a climax in six minutes of warfare according to the author.. Taking Midway starts slowly and builds to a stirring crescendo and Dugard takes you into the cockpit, the bridge, and on the decks of the planes and ships to make you feel like you are there.

I want to thank NetGalley, Martin Dugard, and publisher Penguin Group Dutton for the opportunity to review an ARC of this text. I give it 4.25 stars, rounded down to 4. If you enjoy military history you should add this to your TBR (to be read) list.

The writing is jerky, full of incomplete sentences that after a while get boring.

Plus he seems to have the Flying Tigers in combat before Pearl Harbor, and he claims that Ajax Baumler resigned his commission to join the AVG and then got caught at Midway on December 7/8. But Baumler was still a captain in the USAAF, and when he eventually did get to Kunming by way of India in June 1942, he was STILL a commissioned officer in the US Army.

I quit reading at that point.