About Only the Brave

For Dutton Caliber’s American War Heroes series, a World War II narrative on the American liberation of Guam in 1944, focusing on the twenty days of intense combat as the Marine Corps took the island back from the Japanese.

On July 21, 1944, a US Marine division landed on the beaches of Guam, a once sleepy island in the Pacific that had been seized from the Americans by the Japanese in the hours after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese would not be giving Guam up easily. The large enemy force defended the island viciously, punching holes through the American lines, attacking from the flanks, and eventually resorting to banzai suicide attacks. The fighting was bloody and brutal, every bit as deadly as Iwo Jima or Okinawa would be. Now, acclaimed author Don Keith offers up a compelling account of one of the toughest fights of the Pacific War, a battle that led to ten thousand American casualties and four Medals of Honor.