Nimitz Way in Tilden Park. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet in WWII, moved to Berkeley in his later years. The popular Inspiration Point trail is named for him. Photo: Wikipedia/Creative Commons
They were children of the Victorian Era. Annapolis graduates around the turn of the twentieth century. Junior officers in World War I, captains by 1927. They gained their first admiral’s stars by the 1930s, and all four were near or past retirement age when war broke out. Yet they rose to the pinnacle of leadership in that war and played outsized roles in the Allied victory. And one by one, as their talents became unmistakably clear, they each received a fifth star, becoming the only five-star admirals in American history. Walter Borneman engagingly tells their stories in his joint biography,