Left for Dead

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Summary: Left for Dead(An amazing story of men aboard the U.S.S Indy)
Review: Left for Dead was the best historical book I have ever read. Men aboard the U.S.S Indionapolis died in numbers for many days. 350 men survived a wreck of an enemy sub's torpedo out of 1400. Men were starneded in the middle of the Ocean for days. The U.S. Navy found them after 5 days and needed to blame this devastation on somebody. They chose the captain, Captain McVay of the Indy. The surviving crew tried to clear his name from his court-martial but never got through th Navy. They know it's not their captain's fault. A boy comes along named Hunter Scott. Would a boy be able to clear McVay's name? Will His history fair project lead a wrong in Navy history to a right? This is a book that you'll read for hours at night without puting it down about the men's history aboard the Indy and Hunter Scott's epic tale of how he cleared McVay's name.

Rating:
Summary: Superb book, especially for youth
Review: Not as graphic as "In Harm's Way" by Doug Stanton, this book is perfect (and written for) youth 12 and older. The best part is the detailed description of Hunter Scott's fight to help the survivors exonerate Captain McVay, six decades later. You feel as if you are right there when the Navy official is struggling to explain and make sense of a senseless verdict. Wonderful color pictures of Hunter's journey to find out the truth and eventual victory. These men and this boy are to be remembered as heroes.

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Summary: Left for Dead- A must read
Review: The USS Indianapolis. If this name doesn't sound familiar to you...then you might want to consider reading Left for Dead.
Left for Dead is a Book based on a true story about Hunter Scott, a Florida Schoolboy who did a History Fair project on the USS Indianapolis. This doesn't really sound significant at first, but the book tells you the history of the ship.
The ship was piloted by Captain Charles Mcvay III. It was a cruiser ship, and one of the fastest in the navy. The Ship was always considered lucky, until it was severely damaged by a kamikaze plane. The ship luck ran out, it got torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank. The captain was court-martialed (brought to military court) and he was the one held responsible for the ship sinking.
There were quite a few injustices. It was not the captain's fault the ship sunk, and the navy ignored the SOS signal. The navy also even had the audacity to bring in the sub captain that sank the ship, and purposely translated incorrectly what he said to defend the navy.
Hunter Scott then found out all about this. His project got National attention and him along with the survivors cleared Mcvay's good name.
That is only a very brief summary of the book. The book has lots of neat things in it that kept my attention while I read this incredible story. It gave explicit detail of the sinking, trials etc. Form some of the survivors' points of view. In the book was also the story of how and why Hunter Scott chose the Indianapolis as his History Fair project. The book also has some pages (about 20) of Hunter Scott with the survivors with the survivors, pictures of the survivors during WWII, a picture of the Japanese submarine captain, a map of the area near where it sunk and even a picture of the ship.
History isn't the only thing in this book that caught my eye. There was a lot of interesting scientific information that really wowed me (this is coming from a kid not too interested in science.) All sorts of stuff was in the book about trauma, the nervous system and psychic injury. It was very interesting stuff, and it explained to me a lot of things about flashbacks. The Stuff about the dreams relating to reality fascinated me to. These along with other scientific facts explained why the sailors had flashbacks and bad dreams about the sinking, there was also some very interesting stuff about how things like Sun damage and exposure killed sailors who weren't killed by sharks.
This book incorporated all of this stuff and makes it Interesting and entertaining. If I read about stuff like this in a history textbook, or if it were like stuff you'd find in a history book, I would probably be so bored to death I'd fall asleep and when I woke up I'd want to burn it. The science stuff was also made very interesting as well, and was also explained in a way that didn't boggle my mind or keep me up all night with my eyes wide open trying to figure out what all of it meant. I know I'm only 14, but I know unless you are a scientist any adult would get confused if the scientific knowledge wasn't explained the way it was.
This is a great book. Pick it up and start reading it.