Thunder Below!

Interesting read, plenty of thrills, "day in the life" anecdotes, and history of the USS Barb. Suffers, as to be expected, from being written by the victor, so it presents the war a fun adventure for the boys which is obviously a slanted perspective. Downplays (omits?) the terror and not-fun parts that must have happened, and sort of dehumanizes the Japanese Navy and merchant marine by omission of any real characterization. The prisoners taken aboard are presented almost as comedic relief, and our only real view of them is how they relate to the Barb's mission. Any thought to what suffering and terror they must have suffered as human beings is absent.

Is review by comparison hacky? The Cruel Sea was an exciting book, but was also thoroughly in touch with humanity; it was about the people, what they felt, and what they experienced. Run Silent, Run Deep was also exciting, but its attempt at emotional sincerity was clunky. The "Americans will kill you and then make a movie 20 years later about how it made them feel bad" syndrome. Well, this book is exciting (often fun) but simply wasn't trying to really delve the psyche or provoke deep rumination on the horrors that humanity inflicts on itself, and so by this absence it is pretty much free from clunkiness. There are cheers and victories, celebration cakes and toasts aplenty. Friends and allies are lost, but the grief is mentioned almost in passing, and that probably made it a better book than if an unsuccessful attempt to really touch that grief was made. I'm sure you could draw some interesting lines between the way this book celebrates the good and doesn't mention the bad with the way the generation that lived through WW2 carried that with them the rest of their lives and did/didn't deal with it.