Clearly the American population advantage and industrial capacity make the outcome inevitable but the Japanese character makes its surrender difficult even after the atomic bombs. The brutality of the amphibious landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa show how terrible the battles were for both sides. The Japanese challenge is reconciling its defeat with its national character. One can't look at a successful war as a grand thing US naval and air superiority means there is never any doubt that Japan will lose the war. It certainly Leaves the reader with a sense of the horror of war.

The brutality and otherworldliness of the fighting seemed more immediate. Listeners who have been waiting for the conclusion of Toll's masterpiece will be thrilled by this final volume.Īs with the two prior volumes I felt I was experiencing the Pacific war through the eyes of the Americans and the Japanese. Lionel Barber of the Financial Times chose the second volume of the series ( The Conquering Tide) as the preemiment book of 2016, calling it military history at its best. Toll's narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also takes the listener into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided. Twilight of the Gods is a riveting account of the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the US 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.

Toll, 'one of the great storytellers of war' (Evan Thomas). According to Henry Adams, the 1812 encounter between the USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere 'raised the United States in one half hour to the rank of a first class power in the world.The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and a narrative flair worthy of Patrick O'Brian. How much of a navy would suffice? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.įrom the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliffhanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W.

Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce against the Mediterranean pirates, or drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers? The founders, particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, debated these questions fiercely and switched sides more than once. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the new government.

Six frigates by ian w toll