This book tells the unique story of the USS Houston and her crew. The descriptions of the ship and the battles it took place in and other operations were very detailed and extraordinarily interesting. After the ship was sunk, only around 400 of the original crew of 1,100 survived. People often think that when a ship is sunk, it just slips beneath the waves, but that is certainly not the case for a warship in battle. There is oil in the water, ordinance that is exploding from battle, setting the oil on fire. These survivors of the initial sinking had to swim through burning oil, explosions, sucking water from the sinking ships, enemy fire...all of this while trying to avoid capture. Unfortunately, most of them were captured by the Japanese and sent to POW camps. There they endured the typical amount of torture and starvation, and many were put into forced labor on the Death Railway. I just watched a documentary series about that not long ago. This was a really good book, and terribly sad.