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Wukovits, John. One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle for Tarawa. New York: New American Library, 2006. 320pp. $15
One Square Mile of Hell relates the story of the November 1943 battle for the Tarawa Atoll from the personal level of the Marines who endured this remarkably bloody fight. John Wukovits makes use of firsthand interviews with veterans of the operation, while also citing personal letters and diaries. The result is a personal history that draws the reader into the lives of the corpsmen, privates, lieutenants, and colonels who grimly made their way across the central Pacific.
As events unfold, Wukovits traces the lives of severalMarines as their paths converge on Tarawa. The marriage proposals and strong family ties ominously set the stage for the tragedies that would follow, although the general...