Best Japanese History Books
Here you will get Best Japanese History Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
Author: by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown and Company
English
256 pages
An exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of warA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the Bomber Mafia, asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion.
In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, Was it worth it? Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II.
2. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Author: by E. B. Sledge
English
352 pages
0891419063
Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed. He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacificthe terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinaryinto terms we mortals can grasp.
Tom HanksNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War.Now E.B.
Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation. An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.
Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets. By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.
3. Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Pacific War Trilogy, 3)
Author: by Ian W. Toll
English
944 pages
039308065X
New York Times Bestseller The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. Toll, one of the great storytellers of War (Evan Thomas). In June 1944, the United States launched a crushing assault on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
The capture of the Mariana Islands and the accompanying ruin of Japanese carrier airpower marked a pivotal moment in the Pacific War. No tactical masterstroke or blunder could reverse the increasingly lopsided balance of power between the two combatants. The War in the Pacific had entered its endgame.
Beginning with the Honolulu Conference, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with his Pacific theater commanders to plan the last phase of the campaign against Japan, Twilight of the Gods brings to life the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S.
Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized in atomic blasts.Ian W.
4. Japan: A History
Author: by Lucas Peyton Thomas
B07GFP1LY5
New Word City, Inc.
August 13, 2018
Kyoto – founded in the year 794 and capital of Japan for fully half that nation’s recorded history – sits firmly in the center of Lucas Peyton Thomas’s compelling, vivid history of Japan. Here, in vibrant detail, are the stories of the rise and fall of Japan’s aristocracy, of the days of the shoguns and samurai, of life in its palaces and moated castles, of a country that once sought to rule China but chose to isolate itself for more than 200 years.
Mysterious Japan – a nation known to the West only after the travels of Marco Polo – is unveiled in this engaging book.
5. Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World (Chris Wallace’s Countdown Series)
Author: by Chris Wallace
English
320 pages
1982143347
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Riveting. The New York Times * Propulsive. Time * Reads like a tense thriller. The Washington Post * The book is deservedly the nonfiction blockbuster of the season. The Wall Street Journal From Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of Fox News Sunday, comes an electrifying behind-the-scenes account of the 116 days leading up to the American attack on Hiroshima.
April 12, 1945: After years of bloody conflict in Europe and the Pacific, America is stunned by news of President Franklin D.Roosevelt’s death. In an instant, Vice President Harry Truman, who has been kept out of war planning and knows nothing of the top-secret Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first atomic bomb, must assume command of a nation at war on multiple continentsand confront one of the most consequential decisions in history.
Countdown 1945 tells the gripping true story of the turbulent days, weeks, and months to follow, leading up to August 6, 1945, when Truman gives the order to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. In Countdown 1945, Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of Fox News Sunday, takes readers inside the minds of the iconic and elusive figures who join the quest for the bomb, each for different reasons: the legendary Albert Einstein, who eventually calls his vocal support for the atomic bomb the one great mistake in my life; lead researcher J.
6. The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World
Author: by A. J. Baime
Mariner Books
English
464 pages
[A] well-judged and hugely readable book … Few are as entertaining. Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times A.J.Baime is a master. His reporting and storytelling are woven to hypnotic effect. This is history and humanity in lush, vivid color. Doug Stanton, author of The Odyssey of Echo Company Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who get pushed into extraordinary circumstances, and through courage and a dash of luck, cement their place in history.
Chosen as FDR’s fourth-term vice president for his well-praised work ethic, good judgment, and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man. That is, until he was shockingly thrust in over his head after FDR’s sudden death.
The first four months of Truman’s administration saw the founding of the United Nations, the fall of Berlin, victory at Okinawa, firebombings in Tokyo, the first atomic explosion, the Nazi surrender, the liberation of concentration camps, the mass starvation in Europe, the Potsdam Conference, the controversial decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of imperial Japan, and finally, the end of World War II and the rise of the Cold War.
7. The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944 (Pacific War Trilogy, 2)
Author: by Ian W. Toll
English
656 pages
0393080641
New York Times Bestseller The devastation of Pearl Harbor and the American victory at Midway were prelude to a greater challenge: rolling back the vast Japanese Pacific empire, island by island. This masterful history encompasses the heart of the Pacific Warthe period between mid-1942 and mid-1944when parallel Allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over Japan’s far-flung island empire like a “conquering tide,” concluding with Japan’s irreversible strategic defeat in the Marianas.
It was the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative and logistically complicated amphibious war in history, and it fostered bitter interservice rivalries, leaving wounds that even victory could not heal. Often overlooked, these are the years and fights that decided the Pacific War.Ian W.
Toll’s battle scenesin the air, at sea, and in the junglesare simply riveting. He also takes the reader into the wartime councils in Washington and Tokyo where politics and strategy often collided, and into the struggle to mobilize wartime production, which was the secret of Allied victory.
8. Hiroshima
Author: by John Hersey
English
152 pages
1684116880
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10. Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
Author: by Jonathan Parshall
POTOMAC BOOKS
English
640 pages
Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War. It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s bestselling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement.
Unlike previous accounts, Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle.
Parshall and Tully examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy’s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading World War II naval historian John Lundstrom, Shattered Sword is an indispensable part of any military buff’s library.
Shattered Sword is the winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the “Best Book in U.S. Naval History” and was cited by Proceedings as one of its “Notable Naval Books” for 2005.
11. Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan (Bill O'Reilly's Killing Series)
Author: by Bill O'Reilly
Henry Holt and Co.
English
336 pages
The powerful and riveting new book in the multimillion-selling Killing series by Bill O’Reilly and Martin DugardAutumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat.
The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.
Across the globe in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the deadliest weapon known to mankind. In Washington, DC, FDR dies in office and Harry Truman ascends to the presidency, only to face the most important political decision in history: whether to use that weapon.
And in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito, who is considered a deity by his subjects, refuses to surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Told in the same page-turning style of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan, this epic saga details the final moments of World War II like never before.
12. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
Author: by Iris Chang
Basic Books
English
360 pages
The New York Times bestselling account of one of history’s most brutal – and forgotten – massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China’s capital city on the eve of World War II In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred.
The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese.
Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang’s classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.”Chang vividly, methodically, records what happened, piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror.” – Adam Hochschild, Salon
13. Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai
Author: by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
English
288 pages
4805311983
The comprehensive and accurate edition of the Hagakure is a must-have for serious martial artists or fans of samurai and the bushido code. The Hagakure is one of the most influential of all Japanese textswritten nearly 300 years ago by Yamamoto Tsunetomo to summarize the very essence of the Japanese Samurai bushido (“warrior”) spirit.
Its influence has been felt throughout the world, and yet its existence is scarcely known to many Westerners. This is the first translation to include the complete first two books of the Hagakure and the most reliable and authentic passages contained within the third book; all other English translations published previously have been fragmentary and incomplete.
Alex Bennett’s wholly new and highly readable translation of this essential work includes extensive footnotes that serve to fill in many cultural and historical gaps in the previous translations. This unique combination of readability and scholarship gives Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai a distinct advantage over all previous English editions.
14. Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World
Author: by Amy Stanley
B07Z44RNY7
Scribner (July 14, 2020)
July 14, 2020
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A captivating (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edothe city that would become Tokyoand a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West.
The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorcesand a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approvalshe ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak.
With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate.
15. We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan
Author: by Elizabeth Norman
English
384 pages
0812984846
In the fall of 1941, the Philippines was a gardenia-scented paradise for the American Army and Navy nurses stationed there. War was a distant rumor, life a routine of easy shifts and dinners under the stars. On December 8 all that changed, as Japanese bombs began raining down on American bases in Luzon, and this paradise became a fiery hell.
Caught in the raging battle, the nurses set up field hospitals in the jungles of Bataan and the tunnels of Corregidor, where they tended to the most devastating injuries of war, and suffered the terrors of shells and shrapnel. But the worst was yet to come.
After Bataan and Corregidor fell, the nurses were herded into internment camps where they would endure three years of fear, brutality, and starvation. Once liberated, they returned to an America that at first celebrated them, but later refused to honor their leaders with the medals they clearly deserved.
Here, in letters, diaries, and riveting firsthand accounts, is the story of what really happened during those dark days, woven together in a deeply affecting saga of women in war. Praise for We Band of Angels Gripping … A war story in which the main characters never kill one of the enemy, or even shoot at him, but are nevertheless heroes …
16. Unknown Valor: A Story of Family, Courage, and Sacrifice from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima
Author: by Martha MacCallum
Harper
English
336 pages
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. In honor of the 75th Anniversary of one of the most critical battles of World War II, the popular primetime Fox News anchor of The Story with Martha MacCallum pays tribute to the heroic men who sacrificed everything at Iwo Jima to defeat the Armed Forces of Emperor Hirohitoamong them, a member of her own family, Harry Gray.
Admiral Chester Nimitz spoke of the uncommon valor of the men who fought on Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest and most brutal battles of World War II. In thirty-six grueling days, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed and 22,000 were wounded. Martha MacCallum takes us from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima through the lives of these men of valor, among them Harry Gray, a member of her own family.
In Unknown Valor, she weaves their storiesfrom Boston, Massachusetts, to Gulfport, Mississippi, as told through letters and recollectionsinto the larger history of what American military leaders rightly saw as an eventual showdown in the Pacific with Japan. In a relentless push through the jungles of Guadalcanal, over the coral reefs of Tarawa, past the bloody ridge of Peleliu, against the banzai charges of Guam, and to the cliffs of Saipan, these men were on a path that ultimately led to the black sands of Iwo Jima, the doorstep of the Japanese Empire.
