When Yates McDaniel died in Florida in 1983, few outside his family paid much attention. The only hint of his fame came in a brief obituary buried on the inside pages of the New York Times. The obit suggested bravery and a past far more exciting than almost anyone knew. Even those who worked alongside him in the 1960s at the Associated Press were startled to learn what McDaniel had been, what he had done when he was a young man and the world was at war.

• McDaniel covered more of the Asian war than anyone else—from the savage Japanese assault on Nanking in 1937 to the fall of Singapore in 1942 to landing with US Marines on New Britain in 1943.
• He took risks no other reporter ever accepted, and colleagues joked that Japanese bombers followed him wherever he went.
• He was the last reporter to leave Singapore before its fall to the Japanese in 1942.
• He escaped on one of the last ships leaving Singapore, and when it was sunk by Japanese aircraft, he and 130 others had to survive on a deserted island. 

Author Jack Torry spent two and a half years reading hundreds of the subject's newspaper articles, examining scores of letters written by McDaniel's parents and sister, going through personal letters he wrote during the war, and reviewing extensive interview notes in the Library of Congress.