The New Guinea Campaign is almost forgotten. Compared to the European theater, with charismatic generals like Eisenhower and Patton against the Nazi war machine, or the naval actions in the Pacific with the dramatic clash of carriers before USMC amphibious assaults, the Southwest Pacific Theater has receded from view. MacArthur's overbearing personality and Korean War fall from grace probably have something to do with it, along with the lack of focused battles.

Taafe reads the New Guinea Campaign as a clash of personalities, primarily between MacArthur and his obsession to liberate the Philippines, and the Navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur saw the theater as a race, to get in a strategic position to attack the Philippines before the Navy could get in position to attack Formosa. He pushed this pressures onto his subsidary commanders, General Kreuger of the Army, General Kenner of the Army Air Force, and Admiral Kinkaid, and the men who would actually do the fighting.

The jungle was as much their enemy as the Japanese. Trackless mountains, malarial swamps, kunai grass infested with typhus carrying mites, beaches that washed away, and warding coral reefs. Logistics in the SWPA was a nightmare, although the Americans had it far better than the Japanese, who lost millions of tons of shipping to submarines.

This book shows brilliant strategic outflanking moves, followed by the hard work of prying the Japanese out of the jungle. By 1944 the Japanese Army lacked the mobility to offer more than tactical resistance. One of MacArthur's greatest failures as a commander was to denigrate everything after the landing as "mopping up", when the Japanese forces no longer defended the waterline, and turning clearings into airbases required weeks of attacking fortified cave complexes.

In this book, the difficulties of terrain and distance rise foremost, while oddly enough from the title, MacArthur recedes. His victory came from a stubborn refuse to let nature stop him.

Oh, and the book could really use better maps.