Richard Wheeler was one of the Marines who took Iwo Jima, but he mentions himself only once, and that almost in passing. His role here is that of historian and like his other books, he does a great job of telling the whole story, this is not a first person narrativeOne of the things I really appreciated was the pages spent on the build-up to the battle. He describes the island pre-war and then the successive stages of the Japanese fortifications. I was very interested in the supply routes the Japanese managed to keep open (just), remember the US had near total control of the air and sea by this time, but the Japanese still managed to re-supply, sometimes by sailboat!Wheeler gives a nod to the disagreement amongst the Japanese on the best tactics to use in defending the island, basically a "hit them at the water line" vs "allow them ashore into prepared defenses". He agrees that General Kuribayashi was correct in choosing the later, and also approves of the General's edict against Banzai charges. This could have been described in a little more depth, but the reader certainly comes away with a sufficient understandingThe bulk of the book is of course the description of the battle on a day by day basis, mostly from the Marines perspective, but interspersed with Japanese perspectives and, minimally, that of the supporting US navy. Wheeler is careful to provide the Marine unit designations and cardinal directions, so a careful reading lets the reader keep a good mental picture of which units are where and what they are doing. That is often hard to pick out of battle books, this is some good and careful writing.The text is well supplemented with photos throughout, which I much prefer to the often seen handful of photo plates in the middle pages. In this book, the photos appear in context with the text, if Wheeler is describing an evacuation, you'll find a picture of it nearby. Like almost every book of military history, more maps would have been nice, but as mentioned, the text is so clear it's possible to follow the action even when there isn't a map to refer to.Of course no book on Iwo Jima is complete without the flag raising, and Wheeler deals with it matter of factly and provides the photos of both the first raising and the famous second.Overall, an outstanding description of the battle, complete, accurate, easy to follow and inclusive of all sorts of little tidbits. Highly recommended