In the late summer of 1942, more than ten thousand members of the First Marine Division held a tenuous toehold on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal.
As American marines battled Japanese forces for control of the island, they were joined by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis. Only one of two civilian reporters to land and stay with the marines, Tregaskis’s notebook captured the daily and nightly terrors faced by American forces in one of World War II’s most legendary battles—and it served as the premise for his bestselling book, Guadalcanal Diary.
One of the most distinguished combat reporters to cover World War II, Tregaskis later reported on Cold War conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. In 1964 the Overseas Press Club recognized his first-person reporting under hazardous circumstances by awarding him its George Polk Award for his book Vietnam Diary.
Boomhower’s riveting book is the first to tell Tregaskis’s gripping life story, concentrating on his intrepid reporting experiences during World War II and his fascination with war and its effect on the men who fought it.
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“Alongside Ernie Pyle, Richard Tregaskis was perhaps the most outstanding American war correspondent of World War II…Ray Boomhower’s excellent new biography finally does justice to Tregaskis in this deeply researched, thoughtful portrait of the man and his times.”
— Richard B. Frank, author of Guadalcanal
“War correspondent Richard Tregaskis saw it all…In author Ray Boomhower’s talented hands, the gripping story of one of World War II’s finest journalists leaps off the page in an action-packed tale of a life on the frontlines of history.”
— James Scott, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Target Tokyo“A fascinating biography…This is an engrossing picture of one of the twentieth century’s most important combat reporters, and serves as a necessary companion to Tregaskis’s own front-line dispatches.”
— Joe Jackson, author of Black ElkRay E. Boomhower is interim senior director of the Indiana Historical Society Press. He has written books on the lives of Ernie Pyle, Lew Wallace, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, May Wright Sewall, and John Bartlow Martin, among others. In 2010 he was named winner of the Regional Award in the annual Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards.
Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.