The Mosquito Bowl

New York Times BestsellerAn extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War from the author of Friday Night Lights and 3 Nights in August.“Destined to become a classic. I devoured it.” —John Grisham“[Bissinger] succeeds brilliantly. . . . It changed the way I thought about World War II.”—New York Times Book Review

In World War II, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. On Christmas Eve 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine Regiments were training together for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war—the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included some of the greatest football talent ever assembled: former All-Americans, captains from Wisconsin, Brown, and Notre Dame, and nearly twenty men drafted to or who would play in the NFL.When the trash talking between the 4th and 29th over who had the better football team reached a fever pitch, it was decided: the two regiments would face off in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody football game that followed became known as “the Mosquito Bowl.”Within a matter of months, fifteen of the sixty-five players in “the Mosquito Bowl” would be killed at Okinawa, by far the largest number of American athletes to die in a single battle. The Mosquito Bowl is the story of these brave and beautiful young men, those who survived and those who did not. It is the story of the families and the landscape that shaped them. It is a story of a far more innocent time in both college athletics and the life of the country—and of the loss of that innocence.

About the Author

Buzz Bissinger was born in 1954. He is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, whose books include the New York Times bestsellers 3 Nights in August and Friday Night Lights. He has served as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and as a sports columnist for the Daily Beast, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Time, and many other publications. He lives in both southwestern Washington State and Philadelphia. He is married to Lisa Smith and has three children.