“One must go back to All Quiet on the Western Front to find another novel as charged as this one!” — Philadelphia Inquirer NATIONAL BESTSELLER The magnificent and panoramic novel of World War II Marines in the Pacific by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Once An Eagle and A Green Desire They were our husbands, our fathers, our lovers, our sons. They were Americans and Marines. And this is their story. The Big War is the story of Alan Newcombe, the Boston society Harvard man; Danny Kantaylis, the natural-born leader; Jay O'Neill, the barroom scrapper. Anton Myrer does not glorify war; he does not flinch from describing what the actual experience of warfare was like for a desperate group of Marines trapped in some of the worst fighting conditions of the war. We learn about their lives at home and their fates on the battlefield.