Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LW5JL2/?tag=dedasys-20

I just finished reading this. Very interesting, as it ranges from the details of some of the protagonists on both sides, to battle strategy, and everywhere in between. Very well written, you could almost call it a page-turner.  For a computer guy like me, the bits about the folks doing code breaking in Hawaii were particularly interesting.  Particularly so, because I hadn't realized that the characters in Cryptonomicon were actually based on real life people.

I'd love to find more history books written like that.