The Battle of Guadalcanal took place from August 1942 until February 1943. Because Guadalcanal is an island, both the Japanese and the Americans relied on the sea to supply their forces and bring in reinforcements. James D. Hornfischer’s “Neptune’s Inferno” tells the story of the fight to control the seas around Guadalcanal. These sea battles cost roughly three times as many American lives as the fighting on the island and gave the American surface fleet a hard lesson in modern fleet-on-fleet action.