In this companion to the HBO miniseries, executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, Ambrose focuses on the real-life stories of the five men whose respective duties required every ounce of courage and strength to defeat an enemy who preferred suicide to surrender. The book dares to chart a great ocean of enmity known as The Pacific, revealing the intertwined odysseys of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy carrier pilot during World War II.