War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Hello, everybody.

This is James, as always.

And I've had several listeners request that Sean and I go through the Pacific

miniseries, the one that's the companion to Band of Brothers,

and the one, of course, that was done by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

So I thought I would go ahead and do that, and I'd run those on Saturdays while we're doing

the Barbary War series on Wednesdays.

I know those two things have nothing to do with each other, but that's okay.

They don't have to. And again, if you're the kind of person that doesn't like movie or TV episodes,

obviously feel free to skip this one and just listen to the main episodes on Wednesday. But

if you're a fan of the Pacific, I think you'll enjoy this series. Now, listeners, you will

probably recall that I did the first two episodes only of the Pacific

with my buddy Dave Holland back when I did my Guadalcanal series.

So rather than re-record those, I thought I would just run those because I thought they

went very well.

And Dave, being a big expert on Guadalcanal, was able to provide very insightful commentary

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