This first scholarly account of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War is a companion volume to Arthur Marder's Old Friends, New Enemies: Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941 (0-19-822604-7, OP). Picking up the story at the nadir of British naval fortunes - `everywhere weak and naked', in Churchill's phrase - it examines the Royal Navy's role in events from 1942 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Drawing on both British and Japanese sources and personal accounts by participants, the authors vividly retell the story of the collapse of Allied defences in the Dutch East Indies, culminating in the Battle of the Java Sea. They recount the attempts of the `fighting admiral', Sir James Somerville, to train his motley fleet of cast-offs into an efficient fighting force in spite of the reluctance of Churchill, who resisted the formation of a full-scale British Pacific Fleet until the 1945 assault on the Ryukyu Islands immediately south of Japan. Meticulously researched and fully referenced, this unique and absorbing account provides a controversial analysis of the key personalities who shaped events in these momentous years, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Pacific War. This book also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

The hostile world of Harambee was settled by refugees seeking a better life, with a little nudge from the Transsolar Corporation. Now General Michael Sheridan commands an interstellar peacekeeping operation tasked with bringing order to a world torn apart by poverty, ethnic conflict, and foreign exploitation. His estranged daughter Claire is an idealistic human rights lawyer who adamantly opposes the mission. Njeri Omondi and Amazai Nebtomo are Harambean politicians of rival ethnicities, and secret lovers, who are trying to save their homeworld from implosion. Their worst fears are realized when a coup topples the government and unleashes a horrific campaign of genocide. These individuals must risk everything, and violate their most cherished principles, to stop the killing--especially when Sheridan's peacekeepers are ordered not to intervene. As they strive to rouse an apathetic interstellar community, they have no idea how many great powers are manipulating the war to their advantage. Among them is a utopian moon obsessed with achieving the Singularity: a technological leap forward into a posthuman future.