Call to Arms

The Corps, Book 2

By: W. E. B. Griffin

Narrated by: Dick Hill

The attack on Pearl Harbor swept America into the raging heart of the war. The stormy South Pacific presented a daring new challenge, and the men of the Corps were ready to fight. An elite fraternity united by a glorious tradition of courage and honor, the Marine Raiders were bound to a triumphant destiny....

©2008 W.E.B. Griffin (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“For some of us, reading The Corps series is like eating popcorn at the movies: you can never eat just one kernel, and you can never get enough. Griffin captures the smell of the smoke of battle as vividly as if one were on the beach at Guadalcanal.” ( The Philadelphia Inquirer)

“This man has really done his homework.... I confess to impatiently awaiting the appearance of succeeding books in the series.” ( The Washington Post)

Love all his books

Griffin is amazing bringing history and fiction together and working the storylines. All his series of books are amazing. Suggest all read

Great story!

I'm really beginning to like the corpa series from WEB Griffin. Story is excellent, the characters are memorable, and it is easy to really get into the story. Some of the administrative stuff is a little doll, but that probably is consistent with what real military life is like. Great book. Highly recommended.

A dark story from our history

The second book tells us the story from our character's as their adventures progressed further.

A Superb Follow Up to Semper Fi

Ken “Killer” McCoy and his fellow marines return in the second volume of The Corps series as Griffin chronicles the Marine Corps trying to rapidly bring itself up to war footing after Pearl Harbor. All the characters from the last book return. Banning is blind; Pickering is in flight school; and McCoy gets drafted to spy on a fellow marine whom many in the corps believe is either a secret communist, insane, or evilly determined to destroy the corps by transforming the marines into a version of the British Commandos called the Marine Raiders. The problem with this existential threat is that the evil commander has the ear of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt—so much so that the president’s own son is a high ranking officer in the raiders.

Griffin continues to make the internal marine politics just as exciting as most writers make a battlefield. He also pays some attention to the spouses and girlfriends of active service marines, showing how the war impacts the civilian members of marine families. This touches upon the area where Griffin is weakest—his marines and their girlfriends fall in love at first sight and never look back. He does a better job with relationships that were established before the series began. And of course, he does his best job showing people maneuver and grow within the structures of the corps.

If you’re looking for a book that makes the internal operations of the marine corps breathlessly exciting, this is a good series to look at. I’m already anticipating the next novel.

I am Hooked

If you could sum up Call to Arms in three words, what would they be?

Insightful, Spellbinding, Human

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When Jack Stecker was told his son had died on the Arizona

Any additional comments?

Griffin really captures how Wartime impacts all of us, not just the service members. He shows the good and the bad in all of us and how some work through to the good and others do not.