Yamato was the largest battleship in the world, and Japan sacrificed her in a final, desperate attempt to halt the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago.

[3] A reviewer in the Canadian journal Pacific Affairs commended Spurr's "well-balanced treatment of historical evidence and his workmanship in reconstructing the tragic event", and said that the book "deserves wide reading".

[5] After the war, in February 1946, Spurr was part of the Commonwealth occupation force stationed in the Japanese naval base of Kure in southern Japan.

"[10] He added, "The result, I trust, presents more than the story of a ship or a sortie, but offers some insight into the agonizing dilemma of a misguided, courageous people who persisted in continuing a hopeless war.

[11][13] Yamato, the largest battleship in the world,[12][14] with nine 18.1-inch guns with a range of over 22 miles,[3] became, in the words of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reviewer, a "70,000-ton white elephant the Japanese did not quite know what to do with".

[12] Without air cover there was little chance of Yamato reaching her destination, but, according to American author and journalist Charles Kaiser, the Japanese high command were "perfectly prepared to sacrifice the remnants of [their] fleet to avoid the stigma of surrender".

Reports of Japan's atrocities against war prisoners and even the unnatural fanaticism of the Kamikaze combined to convince the Americans that these were inhuman freaks, deserving little mercy.

[19][a] Roger Jaynes, writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described A Glorious Way to Die as "a dramatic absorbing account of Yamato's last mission".

But once "Yamato finally leaves port", Jaynes said the book is "a chilling account of how more than 3,000 Japanese sailors obediently sailed to their deaths, knowing they had no air cover and that the American planes were waiting".

[3] A reviewer at the Internet Bookwatch said the book is not just "a dry historical record", but is "aptly presented", well researched and "a worthy addition to World War II history shelves".

[23] In a review in the Canadian journal Pacific Affairs, Kyozo Sato noted that the book highlights the Imperial Navy's "fatal lack of foresight" in recognizing the role air support and aircraft carriers would play in naval warfare, and persisted with the construction of Yamato.

[4] He said that Spurr's hope that his book will help explain why Japan refused to surrender, "is a modest aspiration for his well-balanced treatment of historical evidence and his workmanship in reconstructing the tragic event".