HALSEY'S TYPHOON The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, an Untold Rescue

Typhoon Cobra devastated Admiral William "Bull" Halsey's Pacific Fleet in December 1944, sinking ships, smashing airplanes, and throwing sailors to the sharks. Presenting the story as if it were a TV documentary, Eric Conger uses his voice as a portal to allow the story to tell itself. The narration succeeds at becoming invisible, adding no unnecessary drama to the already compelling tale. Conger adopts a professorial style in passages explaining the physics of tropical storm development and relaxes into informality for first-person accounts retrieved from interviews and historical records. The book's only dry moments come from the text's occasional forays into assessing blame for the disaster, and these are blessedly few. R.L.L. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 07]