By Kevin Seabrooke

The enigmatic Colonel Evans Fordyce Carlson, a “racially progressive, bleeding-heart communist sympathizer,” returned to China in 1937 for almost two years to observe the Chinese Communist Party’s 8th Route Army, led by Mao Tse-Tung, and spent nearly a year with guerrillas behind Japanese lines. What he learned there would change the tactics and attitude of what would become America’s special operations forces.

In 1941 Carlson was named commander of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion (Carlson’s Raiders) and in 1942 led a surprise attack on Makin Island in the Gilberts (August) and a month-long raid beyond Japanese lines on Guadalcanal (November).

The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II (Stephen R. Platt, Knopf, New York, NY, 544 pp. May 13, 2025 $35 HC)