Burma, The Longest War, 1941–45

The author, a veteran of the Southeast Asia operations of World War II, presents in this volume a comprehensive history of the Burma campaign. In 1942, Japan conquered the country in short order, driving the Allied forces into India. The Allies launched a counteroffensive that would take almost three years to succeed, a task made even more difficult because the "racialism, arrogance, aloofness and greed'' of English rule had left the Burmese anti-British. Much of the Allied campaign was waged in the jungle, with its concomitants of malaria, typhus, amoebic dysentery, anemia and foot-rot, against a foe whom the author presents as brave and tenacious.  Military events are painstakingly detailed and set in their political and cultural context in this volume, which pays equal attention to both sides of the conflict.