Embracing Defeat: Japan In The Wake Of World War II

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower's examination of Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the most comprehensive history of the over six years of American occupation, which affected every aspect of Japanese society in unexpected ways. Dower, praised as 'America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific,' portrays the complex interactions between West and East, victor and vanquished, from top-level political strategies regarding Emperor Hirohito to the everyday hopes and fears of Japanese people. Regarded as a significant scholarly work, Embracing Defeat is an authoritative history. John W. Dower is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at MIT and a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for War Without Mercy.