Rising Sun, Falling Skies

The Disastrous Java Sea Campaign of World War II

By: Jeffrey Cox

Narrated by: Theodore O'Brien

Length: 22 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Few events have ever shaken a country in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor affected the United States. After the devastating attack, Japanese forces continued to overwhelm the Allies, attacking Malaya with its fortress of Singapore, and taking resource-rich islands in the Pacific - Borneo, Sumatra, and Java - in their own blitzkrieg offensive. Allied losses in these early months after America's entry into the war were great, and among the most devastating were those suffered during the Java Sea Campaign, where a small group of Americans, British, Dutch, and Australians were isolated in the Far East - and directly in the path of the Japanese onslaught. It was to be the first major sea battle of World War II in the Pacific.

©2015 Jeffrey Cox (P)2021 Upfront Books

If you want to learn about the ABDA (American/British/Dutch/Australian) Fleet and Battle of Java, this is it!

I read about the battles that happened around Java during WW2 from a U.S. naval book, although it was mostly based around the USS Houston, still I wanted to know more but material on the subject is very scarce,
This book tells you the fate of Dutch East Indies, it gives you the situation of the Allies before the war and during this campaign. You learn about the heroism, mistakes, courage, fate of the many people and ships. Most of the time you don’t read much about ABDA, WW2 history tends to skip that part or gives you a small paragraph on the Dutch East Indies then focus on Coral Sea and onwards.
I enjoyed this book personally as I learned more of the heroic acts of ABDA, even though out gunned, out numbered in sea and air. They did their best and fought together.

An excellent book with suboptimal narration.

The content of the book is excellent. It's well written, easy to follow, and quite detailed. The only issue is that the narrator mispronounces most non-english names, which can make it difficult at times to know exactly what he's talking about for a few moments. However, it's not that big of an issue and the book is still well worth it.

Great info, from both sides of conflict.

I love that both sides of the conflict are shown here. Wish he wrote about other theaters of war too, like in Africa and Poland, etc.

Panful review of the beginning of Pacific War

It is hard to listen to a book that in great detail covers the disastrous start of the Pacific War with the Japan!

There is a reason why this part of the war is covered very little in the books about the Pacific War. It was NOT "our finest hour"!

It is good that someone took the time in GREAT DETAIL to tell us the story. Will we learn from our mistakes? Doubtful

a must-read for military historians

an excellent history of a lesser-known theater of World war 2 . the author gives a fair account

Great book on a difficult subject.

We need more books like this. This is by no means a feel good book, but it is necessary.

Battle for Java Sea

Excellent book on a part of WW2 we rarely read about . This book is very well written and narrated , I enjoyed this from cover to cover! Kudos

Great information

I have search for a book about the Java sea campaign for a long time. This was exactly what I was looking for. I learned so much about ABDACOM. Narration was very good. Kept my attention.

The first months of the war were frightening.

This is a note to Audible. When books are titled, would it be possible to list it as 1of3, 2of3 and 3of3? I listened to the second book a year ago. Then, I listened to the first few chapters of the 3rd book, before I realized these books were a multi-volume set,

The first book really kept my attention. Thankfully, I know how the war ended, but the first few months were up for grabs.
It didn't seem like the Japanese could lose. The IJA and IJN practiced for several years on China, Manchuria and Korea, it's no wonder they succumbed to victory disease. The combined forces of the American, British, Dutch and Australian (ABDA) forces were more of a challenge, but not much more. Japan may have thought they could conquer Australia, but, I doubt it. Had they taken the Philippines, Indonesia and New Guinea, they might have been able hold all of that.

The 2nd book of this series is excellent. One of the best on Audible. I'm still on the 3rd book. So far, it's OK.

Great History, Atrocious Narration

Please, please, please, narrators, prepare yourselves with a little bit of study and use a pronunciation guide!! The content is outstanding. It is well researched and presented in a fascinating, engaging way. I knew little about the early stages of the war, except for the Malay/Singapore and Philippines campaigns. This filled in the history outside of those campaigns. Documented and oral histories are skillfully interwoven brining an immediacy to the drama that unfolded in those terrible times. The narration, however, was so poor as to detract from the quality of the work, for me. While the narrator has a good voice and well modulated pace, his pronunciation was terrible. He butchered Japanese names and even missed English words. Living in Japan and being an amateur Pacific War historian, I, perhaps, am a bit over sensitive to such pronunciation foibles. It is not difficult to do a little research to determine how to use the English alphabet to pronounce Japanese words. The system is easy and practically fool proof. If such pronunciation doesn’t bother you, you will enjoy this audio book. If it does, beware.