New York Times Best Seller! “So soundly documented that it is hard to see how anyone, ever, will be able to improve on it.”—New York Times

Pulitzer-Prize-winner and bestselling author C. Vann Woodward recreates the gripping account of the battle for Leyte Gulf—the greatest naval battle of World War II and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas.

For the Japanese, it represented their supreme effort; they committed to action virtually every operational fighting ship on the lists of the Imperial Navy, including two powerful new battleships of the Yamato class. It also ended in their greatest defeat—and a tremendous victory for the United States Navy.

Features a new introduction by Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder. Thomas writes: “His elegant prose and arch wit are superbly matched to the challenge of making sense of this immense and notoriously chaotic naval battle. Woodward always told his students that history must be understood first as a story. In these pages, he proves it.”