From the liberation of the Philippines to the Japanese surrender, John C. McManus’s “To the End of the Earth” finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific in 1945. 

Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months — or years — of fight does the enemy have left. 

Readers will walk in the boots of American soldiers and officers, braving intense heat, rampant disease, and a by-now suicidal enemy, determined to kill as many opponents as possible before defeat. 

At the same time, this book bares the titanic ego and ambition of the Pacific War’s greatest general, Douglas MacArthur, and the complex challenges he faced in Japan’s unconditional surrender and America’s lengthy occupation.