John W. Dower - Embracing Defeat Japan in the Wake of World War II

John w. Dowers Embracing Defeat

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Letters for General Nonfiction

Winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Winner of the 2000 Bancroft Prize, awarded by Columbia University

Winner of the 1999 John K. Fairbank Prize sponsored by the American Historical Association for an outstanding book in the history of Asia since 1800

Winner of the 1999 L. L. Winship / PEN New England Award for the years best book with a New England author or subject

Winner of the 2000 Mark Lynton History Prize, one of three prizes awarded under the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project administered by Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University

Winner of an American Library Association Notable Book Award and included on the 2000 Notable Book List in The List for American Readers

Winner of a New York Public Library 25 Books to Remember from 1999 Award

Winner of the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History

Finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction

Finalist for the 1999 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on international relations

Finalist for the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize in nonfiction

More praise for John W. Dowers Embracing Defeat

Beautifully written and exactingly researched, [Embracing Defeat] is an outstanding example of narrative history.

National Book Award citation, 1999

Filled with drama, irony, and passion, Embracing Defeat is both* a brilliant cultural history and an insightful political history of postwar Japan.

American Historical Association, John K. Fairbank Prize citation, 1999

Gracefully written, cogent, and compelling, Embracing Defeat is an extraordinary achievement.

PEN New England, L. L. Winship Award citation, 2000

Magisterial and beautifully written.... [A] richly nuanced book.... A pleasure to read.

J. A. A. Stockwin, New York Times Book Review

[A] superb history of Japans occupation.... Dower brilliantly captures the louche, squalid, but extraordinary dynamic mood of the postwar years. His interest is not just in the politics, but also in literature, the movies, and popular songs.

Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

Embracing Defeat may well be the most important book there is about Japanese-American relations.... Indispensable reading for all who want to understand the current century and the next.

Chalmers Johnson, author of Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State

Without question, Dower is Americas foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific.... A wonderful work of history.... I learned more than I ever would have thought possible.

Stephen E. Ambrose

Dower has captured the spirit of the postwar occupation of Japan in a cinematic narrative that brings the period to life.... Never flinching before the ironies of a victorious United States which imposed democracy on a vanquished Japan which embraced defeat, Dower presents the outcome as a hybrid Japanese-American model that combined neocolonial revolution with imperial democracy to produce the Japan we know today. An epic of a book.

Carol Gluck, Columbia University

Dowers research is extraordinarily deep and broad.... The finest work in English and perhaps in any language on the political and cultural history of Japan in the wake of the most destructive war in modern history.

Andrew Gordon, director, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University

The writing of history doesnt get much better than this.

Publishers Weekly, starred review

A powerful new book.... In defeat, Emperor Hirohito called on the Japanese to endure the unendurable. Mr. Dower has provided the most human and moving account yet of how that struggle led to a triumph over fear, hatred, and humiliation.

Steven R. Weisman, New York Times

[A] sparkling evocation of how victor and vanquished coped with the bitter legacies of war and the daunting challenges of rebuilding a defeated Japan.... A rewarding read and a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary Japan.

Jeff Kingston, Japan Times

One senses that Dower set out to write the most important Japan book in a generation (and perhaps more).The uplifting news is that he has succeeded.... A masterpiece.

Patrick Smith, The Nation

No other English writer has told the story [of occupied Japan] as fairly, as thoroughly and as engagingly as Dower.... Embracing Defeat [is] required reading for anyone interested in Japan today.

Ralph Cassell, Asahi Evening News

Vast, vividly written and stupendously sourced.... A gripping read.

Jonathan Mirsky, [London] Literary Review

A turning point in Japanese history, illuminated through diligent research and piercing insight.

Kirkus Reviews

In re-creating the American occupation as a Japanese experience, Dower has produced nothing less than a masterpiece of modern history.

Steven I. Levine, Library Journal

[A] highly intelligent and sensitive account of the Japanese response to the American occupation, 19451952.

The New Yorker

The official reviews are right: this is a fabulous book about the American occupation of Japan. Dowers approach is thematic, not chronological, and he slices through the subject in many different ways, political, social, cultural, anecdotal.

Amazon.com

[A] graphic, multifaceted account of an extraordinary period in American-Japanese relations. This huge work is going to be the gold standard against which future scholarship will be tested.

Roger Buckley, Far Eastern Economic Review

Superbly researched.

Walter LaFeber, Foreign Affoirs

We have at last a definitive account of how the occupation felt both from the confident perspective of the victors and the varied responses of the vanquished.... [Dower] has now confirmed his position as the doyen of occupation studies.

Roger Buckley, Japan Quarterly

John Dowers magisterial chronicle... is the summa of his five important studies of twentieth-century Japan and the U.S.-Japan relationship.... With this work, Dower consolidates his position as the leading Western historian of modern Japan.... One of those rare books that deserve to be read and debated on both sides of the Pacific.

Mark Selden, H-Asia

[A] superb account of how the Japanese coped with defeat and reinvented themselves as an industrial power.

J. G. Ballard, [London] Sunday Times

[A] masterly analysis of how the imperious MacArthur imposed his will on Japan and a sympathetic, often moving account of the reaction of the Japanese to the disasters which had befallen them.