American Commando

June 1, 2009
The worthy chronicler of the Battle of Tarawa in One Square Mile of Hell (2006) returns to World War II in the Pacific with an excellent biography of Evans Carlson (18961947), founder of the U.S. Marine Raiders. Unorthodox during his service in China, where witnessing the Communist forces influenced his notions about commando-type units, Carlson became more unorthodox in the Pacific theater. That made his superiors suspicious but didnt prevent him from organizing the Raiders, whose submarine-launched, August 1942 raid on Makin Island made them famous. On Guadalcanal later in 1942, they made a probably more useful raid behind Japanese lines, one that offered evidence of the value of such light forces operating covertly. Carlson retired soon after the war, but many of the then-disbanded Raiders served on, influencing not only the marines but other U.S. special operations forces. Exhaustively researched though not exhausting to read, this is another winner for Wukovits.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)