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Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath
by John Toland
Product Group: Book
ISBN: B00005W6O0
Unknown Binding
SKU: 28212
Condition: Collectable Very Goo
Comments: THE HARDBACK BOOK! DOUBLEDAY, 1982. THE UNABRIDGED EDITION. BCE. WITH TERRIFIC PHOTOGRAPHS! HARDCOVER W/GILT LETTERING, DUST JACKET AND PAGES ARE FINE! Rapid shipping w/FREE tracking. GREAT PACKAGING . Air Mail.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
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Customer Reviews
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Master Historian Turns to Pearl Harbor
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-06-02
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I agree with those who have already noted John Toland's superior research and writing skills, which are very much in evidence in this gripping, masterful account.
But as a lawyer I wanted to highlight how enjoyable and fascinating are the behind-the-scenes accounts of the various Pearl Harbor tribunals, which pinned guilt perhaps wrongly on some of the accused. I was particularly interested in famed Boston attorney Charles Rugg's defense of Admiral Kimmel, and the legal tactics employed to best make use of the otherwise secret cables and testimony that Rugg assembled on Kimmel's behalf.
A great account, and an inside look from a master historian of WWII, this one is a no-brainer for anyone interested in WWII history.
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Toland makes his case...but it's still just an indictment and not a conviction
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-11-06
5 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
Due to his impressive body of work including "The Last Hundred Days" and "Adolph Hitler," John Toland will always demarcate the gold standard in history writing.
Thorough going in his research, dogged in pursuing surviving sources for their versions of meetings and moments and recollections, Toland's work shows what really good history writing can be.
In this way, it should probably be equal parts troubling for Roosevelt supporters and detractors that Toland has taken up the gauntlet that Roosevelt knew and allowed the Pearl Harbor diasaster and that even with his considerable talents he still makes a case that in the end amounts to such thin soup.
Spoiler alert! Those wishing to let Toland makes his own case should pick up his book so that this author does not make it for him.
For those still reading, Toland's case essentially boils down to his assertions that US code readers had received and deduced the significance of a one line message from Japan being "East wind, rain." Apparently code for "war with US is on," the message -- according to Toland -- boded additional significance based on prior intelligence reports indicating the likelihood of an attack on the US.
However, and this where the devil gets into the details, one of those prior intelligence reports reportedly went to J Edgar Hoover, then FBI Director, who according to Toland, sat on the message without forwarding it to Roosevelt. Such a state of affairs would have been believable because, at least in one other World War II case, Hoover's FBI sat on potential evidence of Axis wrongdoing. Certainly, to be complicit, it would have been better for Toland's thesis if there was some assertion that Roosevelt himself had gotten word.
Toland's thesis also stops at the level of indictment and not conviction because even if his evidence is taken at face value and given the weight intended it by Toland, it still fails to make any other argument than that because Roosevelt should have known that he did in fact know and that because it seems like Roosevelt intended and intentional loss of US forces that he was in fact complicit in the purposeful loss of US forces.
Still the same, Toland seems incapable of bad writing and like his other works he manages to produce a story complete with almost novel like nuances and character development.
The only problem is that in this book he may have finally succeeded -- albeit inadvertantly -- in writing fiction.
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Excellent--The Dawn of revisionism
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-04-16
9 out of 13 customers found this reveiw helpful
John Toland has done an excellent job in punching holes in the U.S. cover-up about Pearl Harbor. While it is still unproven that FDR positively knew, it is becoming harder to believe he did not. The Japanese did not maintain radio silence as Toland proves, and Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit" leaves no more doubt on this subject. Why people here appeal to the "authority" of Gordon Prange is beyond me. His stonewalling is simply unconvincing and written before much of the Pearl Harbor material was de-classified. Not to mention the fact that Gordon Prange was dead before his books were published! Or even finished! Ghost writers helped that project out. We'll know more when the government finished de-classifying. And if they have nothing to hide, WHY is so much material about Pearl Harbor still classified? The mere fact that Roosevelt moved the Pacific fleet from its normal anchorage on the west coast to Hawaii in 1940 (over the objections of some admirals) has got to make you wonder too.
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Worth a read
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-05-12
10 out of 15 customers found this reveiw helpful
Toland is an excellent historian. He's put together a lot of different lines of evidence to insinuate that the United States was indeed aware of the Pearl Harbor attack before it happened. That's the gist of this book.Does he prove it? No. There is no absolute evidence that proves FDR and the State and War Departments knew that Pearl Harbor was about to be hit. Toland's circumstantial evidence IS very strong, though, and if what he writes here is true (and he documents it all), then it is very difficult not to reach the same conclusions he does. I've always found it difficult to believe that, with the threat of war obviously hanging over the United States and Japan, we had no idea where the Japanese Navy was. But, again, there is no absolute proof, no documents that say "FDR knew." But no other historian, not even Prange, brings up the evidence that Toland does. FDR apologists will hate this book. FDR haters will believe Toland has proven his case. Fair readers will wonder. Historians (and that's the way I make my living) will conclude Toland hasn't proven his point. Not absolutely. But he does do very good investigative work. We'll probably never know for sure what FDR knew or when he knew it.
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Biased reporting ....the decline of a once good author
Rating  (1)
Date: 2004-04-28
10 out of 24 customers found this reveiw helpful
John Toland was an excellent writer. 'The last Hundred days' 'But Not In Shame' are both excellent books and are highly recommended. 'The Rising Sun' is good, very good in spots but the author was already losing his objectivity, clearly and sometimes blatantly. Toland was 'spinning' the story i.e trying to protray the Japanese as good intended ( the war was anti-communist not really imperialistic, yeah, right)culturally indoctrinated 'wrongheaded'( beheading POW's fits into Shinto, how exactly?). Even then He was trying to shift blame over unto the Americans as if the 'poor' Japanese had been duped by the manipulative Americans into war. But this book is almost a farce, come on, Roosevelt would let 'His' beloved navy get massacred so the American Public would permit us to go to war to save Europe? Sure there were hints clues signs there that the 20-20 vision of hindsight of history allow us to say that they could or should have been picked up on. Read Gordon Prange exhaustive series of books on Pearl Harbor for the real truth about the attack. Or read John Costello's book 'The Pacific War' for a very objective and much shorter recount of 'they knew what when' game that Toland weaves out of discredited and, in some cases, imaginary bits of psuedo facts. A good summation from that book is "The Japanese didn't want war, they just wanted Asia. And they were willing to go to war to get it." Toland has clearly lost his ability to to distinguish betweens facts and 'belief as fact'.
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