"To me, it has always been one of the great war stories of all time." - Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In the early morning darkness of August 2, 1943, in the waters of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri sliced an American PT boat in two, leaving its crew for dead in a flaming sea. Over the next three days, the boat's skipper, a boyish lieutenant from Boston named John Fitzgerald Kennedy, repeatedly risked his life in an effort to summon help until he finally secured his crew's rescue. First published to wide critical acclaim in 1961, Robert Donovan's timeless classic tells the complete, harrowing story of PT 109 and her crew.This 40th anniversary edition includes a foreword from Daniel Schorr, a preface by the author recounting the circumstances of the book's creation, and an afterword by World War II naval historian Duane Hove portraying the broader context for PT boat operations in the South Pacific. Here for a new generation of readers is a compelling glimpse of the values of service and duty that characterized America during the war years, as fresh and timely now as when it was published forty years ago. "In PT 109 we see a man assailed by hunger, heat, cold, discouragement and danger rising, without dramatics or posturing, to greatness." - "New York Times Book Review". "A tense, tough and intelligent story of wartime adventure and heroism." - "San Francisco Chronicle".