I received an advance reading copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review. This was an outstanding book that was not only well written, but thoroughly researched. The authors brought to life the men who served on the U.S.S. Indianapolis during World War II. Entrusted with a top secret mission (carrying the atomic bomb) near the end of the war, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine--after they had delivered their cargo. The ship sunk in about 12 minutes resulting in thousands of lives lost. No one came looking for them despite their failure to reach port. Instead a pilot spotted the survivors by chance five days later. By then, many men had succumbed to their injuries or were attacked by sharks. This story is not for the faint of heart, but depicts what happened before, during and after the attack. Unfortunately, the captain was singled out and court martialed on some suspect charges. In reality, he had no control of the situation, but did the best he could to save as many men as possible. He was a true hero and the survivors knew it. Their story is an important one and I recommend anyone who is interested in World War II or history in general to read this book. I believe it will be available sometime in July 2018. Kudos to the authors who not only told the story, but brought peace to many of the survivors by telling their story.

Very informative! A well-detailed account of the ship I really had little knowledge of, except for the speech in the movie Jaws. Read Kindle version but I bet this would make a wonderful coffee table book

What an outstanding job the authors did not only to research the history of the Indianapolis, but to research the lives of the men, themselves, and their families. This made the whole accounting much more human than just a clinical dissection of naval history.

It was beautifully written and there were really nice illustrations.

Once the book is published, I plan to buy a hardcopy and read/peruse it slowly, underlining, book marking and digesting it more thoroughly. I received this as an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, Simon and Schuster.

I requested and received a free review copy via NetGalley!

I really loved this book as it is about history, WWII. The writing is as if you are in the story, and so well defined.

The description of the ship, the sailors, their stories, of how it talks about Pearl Harbor, and then the sinking
of the Indianapolis. The writing is detailed and vivid, you feel the fear and terror that the sailors felt. Some of our service members so young that join to be a part of our U.S. Navy.

The Indianapolis sinking remains the Navy's second greatest loss of life in World War II. Out of a crew of 1,195, only 317 survived.

This is like one of my favorite books I read in a long time. I love history, and being married to a sailor, and listening to them go up and down the ship stairwells and all brought back memories for me. My sailor was on the U.S.S. Sierra that was a destroyer tender part of the WWII also.

Definitely pick a copy of this book, you will not be dissapointed.

Lynn Vincent has done an incredible job of bringing not only the details of the events leading up to but also, during and after the tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis. From the devastating kamikaze attack several months prior to the tragic sinking to the fight to clear Captain McVay's name, the facts are laid out in a riveting way with periods of pure horror at what the survivors endured during their 4 1/2 days in the deadly waters of the Pacific. I've always been inspired by the survivors of the Indianapolis who never gave up even when faced with certain death which certainly puts our ordinary everyday stresses in perspective. A must read for history/military history fans!

Coming from these two authors, I knew this was going to be a good book. And it was. I don't usually do Military history. But something about this story pulled at me.

A true account of what happened to the ship and crew of the USS Indianapolis. After delivering precious cargo that would effectively end the war with Japan, she has limped on a course to complete the repairs that were not finished before they were pulled for a special top-secret mission. But they never made it. Torpedoed by the enemy and sank. 

A story of bravery, of teen-aged boys stepping up when needed. Of the fight to survive for those left alive in the dark water surrounded by deadly oil slicks and sharks. I am not going to lie, it was hard to read some of this but then these young men sacrificed their lives and as we learn more about each one we become invested in their survival.

A story of how a crew and an enemy came forward to save their Captain from an unjust court-martial.

Any military fans will love this in-depth look at our military history. I know I will never forget this one.

Netgalley/ Simon and Schuster  July 10, 2018

A truly excellent book. Well-told, well-researched, comprehensive, and satisfying. I've read several books about the Indianapolis (all of them wonderful, really) and its sinking by torpedo at the end of the war, after which the survivors drifted in the ocean for four days before anyone happened upon them. But I'd forgotten or never known that the ship and crew had just finished delivering The Bombs that brought about the Japanese surrender, and I didn't know either about the nice occupatio of how the man who captained a navy sub, named for the Indianapolis, helped bring about the exoneration of Captain McVay. The ending passages, about the shipwreck's discovery, were perfect.

I imagine I'll be giving this one to my stepdad. Highly recommended.

Reads like fiction: big time admiralty SNAFU allowing an important USN ship, cargo, and crew to be torpedoed and sunk without support so that too many died then and there and those who were alive weren't rescued for nearly a week. Then came the cover up, wrongful accusations, driving the captain to opt out of life. But it's not fiction, it's a well researched documentation of a very shameful event near the end of WW2. The survivors suffered badly without water in the remorseless South Pacific Ocean waiting for rescue and continued to suffer even afterwards. Extremely well written and meticulously researched, it brings it all to life and reality. A rewarding read.
I requested and received a free review copy via NetGalley. Thank you!

WOW. Military history is usually not one of my first choices when I choose to read non-fiction, but I didn’t know anything about the USS Indianapolis and thought this would be a great opportunity to learn about it. I felt like this book was so much more than an education on history. It reads like a beautifully written novel, made only more compelling by the fact that everything actually happened. The authors did a fantastic job humanizing this history by interweaving the stories of the men on board, as well as their spouses back in the states, with major historical events associated with the ship. There were points were I wanted to laugh, cry, and cheer. If all history books were written like this I would never hesitate to dive in.

Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic have crafted an amazing read in "Indianapolis", with great insight into mission details, the actions and personalities of the crew. They write the "facts" but have the ability to wrap the facts with humanity that makes the story move. Captain Charles McVay is a case in point where even the good guys look bad, often for a long time. I enjoyed it and learned some more stuff.

My review has been posted to Goodreads.

Review has also been tweeted as usual.

Thank you! :c)

WOW does not even begin to tell how awesome this book is!!! I have read many WWII stories and this one surpasses them all. Lynn and Sara’s research was absolutely phenomenal and their story telling takes this disaster to a new level. One of the best written, most riveting books I have ever read. If I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it, or telling my husband what I had just read, and most times, I would tear up when relating the events. This story pulls you into every emotion you can imagine, I broke down crying with emotional tears several times, they were not sad tears, they were tears brought on by the actions of the rescuers, the survivors, or the showing of devotion they had for their captain. You feel love, caring, fear, heartache, loss, death, life, sacrifice, anger, and most of all, hope. Amid a horrible situation, heroes rose above the rest, the humanity effort by the rescuers was unbelievable.
I will remember this book for years to come and will re-read it at least once a year. It is that awesome!! There could not have been a better way to honor the men that gave their lives, to admire and respect the ones who survived but were changed forever and to remember the ones that agreed to finally tell their stories before that era is gone. Justice was finally served due to one tenacious young man and a bunch of survivors.
I now have two favorite books of my lifetime, this one and The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.
Phenomenal is the best word I can use to describe this book, it should be required reading in all high schools.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Simon and Schuster through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This one gets 5*****’s, if I could, it would get 10**********, this is one of the best books I have ever read!!!

Excellent history book. Well written. Very informative. I learned a lot. WW2 always fascinated me. I highly recommend this book.

This is an amazing and staggering story about brave sailors and Marines facing impossible odds following the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in WW2. A highly readable and throughly researched book that tells a non-fiction story with some elements of reconstructed first person narrative. Well worth a read and will leave you with your heart in your throat for the entire book.

What an incredible, compelling, and absorbing read. My interest in the Indianapolis began with that scene in Jaws where the crusty Quint reveals he was on board the vessel that delivered the bomb, the USS Indianapolis. It was a chilling story. The best part of this book are the survivors' stories. I had no idea what transpired during those 5 days afloat in the Pacific. It was also sad to read the stories of some of the survivors after the sinking, but heartwarming to read others' tales as well. This book is a comprehensive study of the Indianapolis' story in its entirety. I remember when it was found last year and this book is an excellent testament to the ship and her crew.

If there were 10 stars, this book would receive them. This book was engrossing and exciting. It kept me reading late into the night. I was not familiar with the story and am so glad the authors do it justice. They represent the men of the Indianapolis respectfully and tell their stories with careful attention to detail without sounding like textbook. Even though we know what happened, it was an enthralling read. It was clearly a labor of love for the authors.

I received a digital copy through NetGalley for an honest review.

Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic’s collaborative history of the nation’s worst naval catastrophe is well constructed and researched. The result is an astounding record of submarine warfare against American warships and how a ship’s commander can be made culpable for over 800 deaths, a wrong only rectified after 50 years of bitter dispute.

The USS Indianapolis was a heavy cruiser launched in 1932 and through the years, before her sinking on July 30, 1945, she amassed a distinguished record of service. Eight battle stars had been awarded to her crew. She was instrumental in America’s victory at Iwo Jima and delivered the parts for the atomic bomb that demolished Hiroshima. But with the torpedoing that killed almost 900 of her 1,195 crewmen, her story became more about the sinking and the survivors of 4 days of brutal suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, saltwater virulence, drowning, and shark attacks.

The drama was painfully extended fby the court-martialing of the ship’s commander, Captain Charles B. McKay III. Naval officers far from the scene were more interested in covering their own rear ends than in finding the real cause of the sinking. They piled on McKay and he was shamefully convicted of failing to zigzag his ship despite testimony from numerous experts that it wouldn’t have made of difference in getting torpedoed. It was a pitifully weak conviction. He suffered with that indignity until 1968 when he shot himself in despair. Congress eventually exonerated him in 2000, long after his death. The surviving crewmembers never waivered in their support for their commander.

The book extensively covers the sinking, the survival, the trial, and the painful aftermath using straightforward language and thorough research. The trial proceedings deserve special mention for their accuracy and interest.

Both authors had accumulated an immense amount of research materials; Vincent in her role as a veteran investigative reporter and Vladic as an acclaimed filmmaker with a particular interest in the Indianapolis disaster. It’s an amazing collaboration of material that combines the explicit facts with riveting personal accounts. One cannot read the story without both being disgusted with naval authority failings and sorrowful at the suffering of the victims and the ship’s commander. It’s an amazing accounting that I won’t soon forget.

I've been fascinated by military history ever since I got straight As in Naval Science in college and I have more than thirty titles in my library. This title, Indianapolis ,is as good as any of them, even though some may say it's too gruesome. With wounded men covered with oil floating in the Pacific in the broiling sun and getting eaten by sharks, the book is brutally dramatic, but it's the truth. Three quarters of the men aboard the torpedoed Indianapolis died and the ship's captain was courtmartialed. But most of the survivors thought he didn't deserve the conviction, and fought for more than 50 years for the court-martial to be overturned. This is an excellent book that has everything--strategy, action, drama, and great personalities.

The story of the sinking of the Indianapolis has been told repeatedly over the years, but this appears to be the definitive account.
The Indianapolis delivered the uranium for Fat Man and Little Boy, making it possible to assemble the bombs that would end WWII. Job done, she set out on her next voyage...and never arrived.
Unfortunately nobody noticed.
Her distress messages didn't get out with all the necessary information. 1195 men found themselves sinking in the ocean after a Japanese submarine torpedoed their ship. Many died as a result of the sinking, trapped in the ship wreckage, leaving hundreds swimming, struggling to get to rafts and flotation devices. There they waited for days, coated in bunker fuel oil, suffering from their injuries, hungry and thirsty. The sharks took them one by one.
They were found by chance when a seaplane on patrol noticed the oil slick and looked for the source. Once found, the rescue took place in piecemeal fashion, and the Navy covered things up. Three out of every four crewmen on the Indianapolis died.
Captain McVay survived, and the Navy decided to make him the scapegoat for the sinking. For decades he was a pariah to all except his surviving crew, who still honored him at reunions. McVay ultimately committed suicide. He didn't live to see his ultimate vindication, generated by a high school kid working on a history project for school. The youth contacted survivors, assembled memorabilia and oral accounts, and pushed an effort to change the way the Indianapolis sinking was viewed in history.
History can be fixed. It just needs to happen while the people who lived it are still around.

Indianapolis is an outstanding telling of the ship that was entrusted with the responsibility of carrying the atomic weapons that led to the end of World War II in Japan... and then was sunk shortly afterwards. It is the story of how the men survived five days in in shark-infested waters while the Navy bumbled about, not even knowing that the ship was missing until some of the survivors were spotted by a passing plane. It is the story of how the captain of the vessel was unjustly blamed for everything that happened -- and finally was absolved of guilt for the incident, decades after his death from suicide.

At times, this book reads almost like a fiction book. The stories of the sailors being surrounded by sharks, going crazy, and struggling to survive, are exciting and horrifying because they are true. You care for the people in this story as you get to know them, and I admit that I cried at the end when the ship's captain finally received justice.

This is a beautifully written story that would be great for history buffs, people that are interested in World War II, and people that like to see good finally triumph over corruption and miscarriages of justice.

I will be reviewing this book from another angle and will publish to my blog on June 11th.