On Christmas Eve of 1944, the 4th and 29th Marine regiments in the Pacific were training for the invasion of Okinawa. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Buzz Bissinger reveals here, their ranks included a sizeable crop of All Americans and future NFL players. The two regiments would play each other in "The Mosquito Bowl," a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal, and Bissinger uses this clash to evoke a bygone America and the spirit of the Greatest Generation.

"Harrowing, profound, and illuminating…. As familiar as the subject of World War II may seem, this book makes you see it in a fresh and exquisite way, with all its pain and triumph rendered in close detail."—Susan Orlean