Ebook: Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors

From Publishers Weekly This engrossing WWII epic by Hornfischer (*The**Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors*) recounts the exploits of the *Houston*, mainstay of the skimpy Allied fleet opposing the Japanese onslaught in the war's early days, until her sinking in a desperate battle with overwhelming Japanese forces in the Java Sea in 1942. This part of the story features a superb evocation of naval combat as the harnessing of immense destructive forces—booming eight-inch guns, plunging bombs, stealthy torpedoes—by the crew's frenzied yet meticulous choreography. The narrative then shifts gears to follow the *Houston'*s several hundred survivors through Japanese POW camps in Southeast Asia, focusing on the labor camps on the Burma-Thailand railway (glamorized in the movie *Bridge on the River Kwai*). Shorn of their weapons and confronting starvation, disease and the brutality of Japanese guards, the prisoners cultivated a different kind of heroism, where survival hung on the ability to absorb hardship and humiliation without complaint, and the pilfering of an egg or a can of condensed milk for the dying was the ultimate act of courage. The result is a gripping, well-told memorial to Greatest Generation martyrdom. Photos. *(Nov. 7)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* The author of *Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors* (2004) gives us another excellent volume of World War II naval history. His subject is now the heavy cruiser *Houston--*before the war, FDR's favorite ship for a Caribbean cruise and, in 1941, flagship of the Asiatic Fleet. Her crew was prewar navy almost to a man, as well as being part of the peculiar subculture of the Asiatic Fleet. When war came, the surface vessels of the fleet sailed south to join in the defense of the Dutch East Indies, which has been described as "a magnificent display of very bad strategy." *Houston* fought long and well, taking major damage in a Japanese air attack and fighting in the Battle of the Java Sea. She and HMS *Perth* encountered the Japanese invasion of Java, and both went down fighting. Most of *Houston*'s crew went down with her or died as Japanese POWs. Drawing on the survivors' accounts and extensive published resources, Hornfischer has painted a compelling picture of one of the most gallant ships and one of the grimmest campaigns in American naval history. He has a positive genius for depicting the surface-warfare sailor in a tight spot. May he write long and give them more memorials. *Roland Green* *Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved*