Reliable? The short answer is “Yes.”

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You are probably already familiar with his Naval Institute Press bio. If not, he was at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for 20 years as an editor of the Army journal Military Review that goes to “field grade” officers – majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels – while also writing books on military history and current military operations. Then he went to a shadowy military intelligence outfit also located at Leavenworth called the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) which, according to their public web site, examines “foreign perspective insights of understudied and unconsidered aspects of the operational environment.” The Naval Institute Press bio doesn’t say what he did at FMSO but it seems likely that he was part of the organization that produced “products integral to critical thinking in the Army’s leadership, analytic communities, and military education, and wherever there is a professional interest in what ‘[foreign militaries] think they think’.”

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So it’s pretty clear that for a very long time he’s been deeply immersed in the study of strategy, combat operations, -- plus the armies of past, current, and potential enemies – and in communicating his and others’ knowledge to “military professionals.” Focus on this audience, however, has likely contributed to one admitted problem with the book. In the preface Giangreco states:

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“I have been playfully teased by former and forthcoming coauthors of mine, John T. Kuehn, commander, USN (Ret.), and Donald L. Gilmore, colleagues from my years at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, over how I have approached American and Japanese planning for the invasion. Both have remarked that, unlike in previous works, Olympic and Ketsu-Go are given the somewhat dense ‘Staff College treatment’ in Hell to Pay. I can only plead guilty. This level of examination had to be done, however, because there are so many deep-rooted misconceptions attached to this subject, particularly regarding the true state of the Imperial Army and Navy, as well as their air elements, and the basic realities ‘on the ground’ in the Olympic and Coronet invasion areas.”

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In fact, he doesn’t write as badly as he seems to think he does and the truly enormous amount of data he disgorges in Hell to Pay is well organized and clearly presented. It may be significant that although aspects of the book have been nitpicked on the web (what a surprise!), I can’t recall seeing even one negative review of the book – and it’s received quite a few of them in both military and academic journals as well as mainstream publications. This is a useful review of the new edition, http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/1610.asp, and here is a transcript of a recent lecture he gave at the Pritzker Military Museum in Chicago, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169567. Be sure to check out the links following the article. A very lengthy interview with him can be found here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4uDfg38gyk. Beyond these sources, there are many reviews of Giangreco’s books scattered across the Web. Someone has also put together a web site on his work, http://waszak.com/giangreco/, but the bio seems a little dated. A few of the links in the bibliography are broken but most are just fine.