The Frozen Chosen: The 1st Marine Division and the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir

I was very excited to read this, as I have heard a lot about the battle, but never had really much detailed accounts of it. I was expecting a novel about the marines themselves, and what they had to go through at the battle, how they over came the battle, etc. For the first 65-75% of this book, it is the entire history of how the Korean war began, how the sides came to be, such as how the North Korean army were veterans of the Chinese civil war, all about the backgrounds of Mao, etc. There was just entirely way too much back story, which ended up being the majority of the book. The book does not get to the battle of Chosin until about page 210. This book is 378 pages long. Also, there is not much dialogue or even anecdotes in this. It is all maneuvers, army positions that goes so fast, it is difficult to keep up, especially with the limited maps and timing. There were a handful of good stories in the book, which I thought the entire book would be about, such as two marines fighting a giant onslaught of Chinese and surviving, or small tank battles. But really, the book is exposition of how the battles happened vs a Marine's point of view of the events happening. If you want to make a documentary or map video of how the battle happened, this is for you.