One thing I like about this book is that it gives you a great feel for the remoteness and size of this theater. At one point Bergerud describes how a person could have lived inland on one of the South Pacific islands and never have realized that there was a world war going on. The descriptions of the jungles, the Golden Staircase, and the conflicts between the tribesmen and the Japanese are all great stuff too.

On a personal level, anyone who has stood a long watch will sympathize with the description of the time that Capt Krause spends on the bridge in this book. The cold, the boredom with the underlying tension, the inability to leave the bridge to make a head call - it all adds up. This is a superb story of sub vs destroyer combat and one that bears rereading.