• Countdown to Pearl Harbor

  • The Twelve Days to the Attack
  • By: Steve Twomey
  • Narrated by: Holter Graham
  • Length: 11 hrs
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (194 ratings)

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Countdown to Pearl Harbor

By: Steve Twomey
Narrated by: Holter Graham
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Publisher's summary

A fascinating look at the twelve days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—the warnings, clues and missteps—by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.

In Washington, DC, in late November 1941, admirals compose the most ominous message in Navy history to warn Hawaii of possible danger, but they write it too vaguely. They think precautions are being taken, but never check to see if they are. A key intelligence officer wants more warnings sent, but he is on the losing end of a bureaucratic battle and can’t get the message out. American sleuths have pierced Japan’s most vital diplomatic code, and Washington believes it has a window on the enemy’s soul - but it does not.

In a small office at Pearl Harbor, overlooking the battleships at the heart of America’s seafaring power, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet tries to figure out how much danger he really faces. His intelligence unit has lost track of Japan’s biggest aircraft carriers, but assumes they are resting in a port far away. The admiral thinks Pearl is too shallow for torpedoes, so he never puts up a barrier. As he frets, a Japanese spy is counting the warships in the harbor and reporting to Tokyo.

There were false assumptions, and racist ones: The Japanese aren’t very good aviators and they don’t have the nerve or the skill to attempt a strike so far from their home. There were misunderstandings, conflicting desires, painful choices. And there was a naval officer who, on his very first mission as captain of his very first ship, did exactly the right thing. His warning could have averted disaster, but his superiors reacted too leisurely. Japanese planes arrived moments later.

Twomey’s telescoping of the twelve days leading to the attack unravels the crucial characters and moments, and produces an edge-of-your seat drama with fascinating details about America at this moment in its history. By the end, the reader understands how assumption is the root of disaster, and how sometimes a gamble pays off.

©2016 Steve Twomey. All rights reserved. (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about Countdown to Pearl Harbor

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Technical problems in Chapter 7

Would you try another book from Steve Twomey and/or Holter Graham?

Holter Graham's narration is unlistenable.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Text seems OK

How could the performance have been better?

Serious technical problems with narration in Chapter 7. Halting speech, weird gaps between words, UNLISTENABLE.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Doesn't ANYBODY review this stuff?

Any additional comments?

Same problem on both my iPod and on my Kindle.

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

New insights even for history buffs

I enjoyed learning about the weaknesses in the US preparation for war in the Pacific. The book makes it clear that with the knowledge they had at the time, it would have been a leap of faith for Admiral Kimmel and General Short to anticipate and prepare for an air raid. After all, the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was unprecedented. Never before had a force of aircraft carriers attacked a distant naval base by surprise.

However, it's also clear that Kimmel and Short could have done a lot more. They could have had a long distance air patrol, torpedo nets (especially after the British raid on the Italian navy in harbor in Taranto), and crews alerted to imminent hostile action.

But it was disappointing that the book did not address the US response to this lack of preparation after the attack. The book concludes with a postscript that briefly mentions the court martial of Kimmel and Short. I expected a discussion and analysis that was as insightful as the rest of the book, but the author did not discuss the command changes, changes in military procedure, and military response after the attack.

As with a lot of history books, this one is also written from the point of view of the victors and Japanese sources are few. It is never clear why the Japanese chose to attack and start a war that they knew they could not win.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Exactly what I wanted

In depth work about the political, military, and societal factors that culminated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Focusing heavily on American intelligence failures and the complacency that allowed the Japanese to achieve such complete surprise. Pairs well with Walter Lord’s book Day of Infamy to get a more complete picture of December 7th, 1941.

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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An Excellent Historical Story

Expertly told...I had no idea of this history or its story. This story needs to be more fully understood by ALL students in schools and colleges as well as the General public.

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Loved this!

Such amazing detail, and reads like a suspense novel! This gave me a whole different view of Pearl Harbor and what I feel now was a laissez-faire approach to the defense of peace-time Pearl.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Please narrator don't attempt voice's

Someone should have told the narrator that trying to do voice's is not his thing. The history is interesting but the bad attempt at voices is distracting.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Downright enthralling, despite a novice narrator

I call the reader a novice, but that’s just a guess. He sounds like a smart college student performing his first professional reading assignment, and he possesses an unfortunately boyish voice. And he tries a bit too hard: It’s clear he's fascinated by the material he’s narrating, which is definitely a point in his favor; but he’s somehow TOO enthusiastic, overemphasizing a word or two in every phrase as if reading to an inattentive elder.

The biggest problem is that when the book quotes someone directly — and in fact it’s filled with direct quotes — our eager young narrator signals that he’s quoting somebody by putting on a coarse, folksy, sometimes almost illiterate accent. Occasionally he even seems to be imitating a slightly drunken cowboy in a barroom, or a swaggering Southern redneck. The effect is weird; everyone comes off sounding a bit stupid. Admiral Husband Kimmel, for example, the man in charge of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor — obviously a major figure in this book — sounds at times like he’s some sort of crusty Western character actor. Even patrician President Roosevelt is sometimes made to sound like this. Prep-school- and Ivy-educated Boston Brahmins sound like ordinary folks.

I don’t know how the best professional audiobook readers indicate quoted material, but they somehow manage to do it without turning the speakers into caricatures.

Which is a shame, because the book is extraordinarily well written, fascinating in its wealth of research, and highly suspenseful (how could it not be?) as the Infamous Day draws closer and closer. It sheds a fairly sympathetic light on Admiral Kimmel and army commanding general Walter Short (but by no means exonerates them), detailing the preparations — or lack of them — for defense of the fleet; the poor communication between army and navy; the deference accorded Kimmel (in retrospect too much deference) to direct base security on his own without interference or oversight from Washington; the wealth of top-secret diplomatic traffic back and forth; the short supply of surveillance aircraft that might have spotted the Japanese fleet, if it had been sent out in the right direction; the well-known failure to act on two last-minute sightings (of a Japanese midget submarine and of a swarm of incoming aircraft spied on primitive radar); and the absurdity of the conspiracy buffs who claim Roosevelt knew of the attack.

The truth is, as the book makes clear, everyone knew that war with the Japanese was likely and probably imminent; almost everyone knew that the Japs were capable of a surprise attack without a normal declaration of war. What no one knew was precisely where the attack was going to come, or whether it would necessarily be against the United States (although, as the book reveals, we might well have regarded even an attack on British-held Singapore as sufficient grounds for war). For Japan to target distant Hawaii seemed such an implausible gamble, against a far mightier power, that it simply wasn’t taken very seriously. Earlier in 1941 a pair of intelligence experts had played with the idea of a dawn surprise attack launched by a fleet of Japanese aircraft carriers, and in retrospect the prescience of their scenario seems astonishing; but at the time, the paper they wrote was merely an intellectual exercise.

The sense I get from the book is that while, as is usual in disasters, there’s plenty of blame to go around, in truth the success of the Japanese strike was due as much to the sheer audacity of Admiral Yamamoto's plan as it was to America’s failure of imagination.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Well researched and a detailed read

I enjoyed this book tremendously, although it was a bit wordy at times. I have never seen all of the pieces of the puzzle from the perspectives of Japan and the United States put together as they were in this book.

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book

loved it it shows on this version it was not the American s totally at fault


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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A bit tedious but informative.

Narration: uninspiring. Lacks oomph. Just not enough variety in delivery. The narration comes across more as a chore than provocative insight.

Story: important and of significance to academics. All others may find this recounting tedious.

A shorter book (just the essence) would be for the less academic listener sufficient.

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