The Fall of Japan by William Craig
New York Times Bestseller: A virtually faultless account of the last weeks of WI in the Pacific from both Japanese and American perspectives (The New York Times Book Review).By midsummer 1945, Japan had long since lost the war in the Pacific. The people were not told the truth, and neither was the emperor. Japanese generals, admirals, and statesmen knew, but only a handful of leaders were willing to accept defeat. Most were bent on fighting the Allies until the last Japanese soldier died and the last city burned to the ground.
Exhaustively researched and vividly told, The Fall of Japan masterfully chronicles the dramatic events that brought an end to the Pacific War and forced a once-mighty military nation to surrender unconditionally.
From the ferocious fighting on Okinawa to the all-but-impossible mission to drop the 2nd atom bomb, and from Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House to the Tokyo bunker where tearful Japanese leaders first told the emperor the truth, William Craig captures the pivotal events of the war with spellbinding authority. The Fall of Japan brings to life both celebrated and lesser-known historical figures, including Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the brash commander who drew up the Yamamoto plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor and inspired the death cult of kamikaze pilots., This astonishing account ranks alongside Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day and John Toland's The Rising Sun as a masterpiece of World War I history.
“A magnificent telling . . . Leaves the reader spellbound.” —Cornelius Ryan, Book Week
“A dramatic and yet authentic evocation of an epic.” —The New York Times
“Vivid and tirelessly researched.” —The Observer
“Exceptional . . . History with narrative drive.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“History with the excitement of a thriller.” —Birmingham Evening Mail
William Craig was an American novelist and historian who lived from 1929 until 1997. He was born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, and in 1958, he took a break from his job as an advertising salesperson to participate on the game show Tic-Tac-Dough. Craig enrolled at Columbia University and got both an undergraduate and a master's degree in history with his $42,000 in winnings--a record-breaking figure at the time. In 1967, he published his debut book, The Collapse of Japan. The book, a narrative history of World War II's closing weeks in the Pacific, hit the top 10 on the New York Times bestseller list and was praised by the New York Times Book Review as nearly perfect.
Craig traveled to three continents to interview hundreds of military and civilian survivors for Enemy at the Gates (1973), a documentary depiction of the Battle of Stalingrad. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and it was adapted into a film starring Jude Law and Joseph Fiennes. Craig published two outstanding espionage novels, The Tashkent Crisis (1971) and The Strasbourg Legacy (1975), in addition to his World War II histories.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781504046893 |
| ISBN 10 | 1504046897 |
| Title | The Fall of Japan |
| Author | William Craig |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Open Road Media |
| Year published | 2017-08-22 |
| Number of pages | 361 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |