In the Pacific War's first months, elements of four navies, Dutch, British, American, and Australian, fought a delaying action against superior Japanese forces as heroic as it was hopeless. Cox brings an attorney's incisiveness, a historian's comprehension, and a storyteller's passion to this compelling account of the Java Sea campaign. Rising Sun, Falling Skies commemorates not a defense but a defiance: a forgotten epic of character and honor.

Dennis Showalter

As Japanese forces were hitting Pearl Harbor, countrymen undertook to maul the Allies in the Java Sea. That 1941-1942 onslaught, which cost the Royal Navy the dreadnoughts Repulse and Prince of Wales, inflicted a string of defeats unjustifiably accorded short shrift in many histories. Here they receive an informed airing.

World War II Magazine

A seminal work about a long neglected part of World War II in the Pacific... richly detailed with accounts from the men on both sides of the conflict who fought desperate struggles in 1942 either as conquerors or defenders.

Mike Walling, author of Forgotten Sacrifice and Bloodstained Sea

. . . an excellent read on a topic too often glossed over in general histories and too rarely covered in specific ones.

Strategy & Tactics