If you live in the United States, you probably know that Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese military in 1941, an act which triggered America’s involvement in World War II.  You probably DON’T know, however, that the Japanese invaded Alaska’s Aleutian Islands six months later.  This meticulously researched book tells that story.

The packaging here is masterful.  The cover is enticing and edgy, the book is shaped like most novels, primary source photos pop up on many of the pages, and the font size is large and readable.  Seiple, who has worked as a competitive intelligence specialist for a Fortune 100 company (according to the flap), includes fourteen pages of source notes and image credits.  She also gives the reader wonderful finding aids, including both a table of contents, and an eight page index.  In between, she tells the story more-or-less chronologically, from the perspectives of a wide variety of participants in the events.  The information is based not only on formerly confidential documents from the United States government, but on interviews with some of the witnesses of the events who are still alive.

The only downside to this title is that the narrative is not always as engrossing it could be.  Seiple sticks to the facts and primary testimony, and that can at times make this a dry read.  The unique strengths of this title, however, outweigh the weaknesses, and those strengths make this an essential purchase for any library, particularly libraries serving a military population.