With startling revelations; Tsuyoshi Hasegawa rewrites the standard history of the end of World War II in the Pacific. By fully integrating the three key actors in the story--the United States; the Soviet Union; and Japan--Hasegawa for the first time puts the last months of the war into international perspective.From April 1945; when Stalin broke the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and Harry Truman assumed the presidency; to the final Soviet military actions against Japan; Hasegawa brings to light the real reasons Japan surrendered. From Washington to Moscow to Tokyo and back again; he shows us a high-stakes diplomatic game as Truman and Stalin sought to outmaneuver each other in forcing Japan's surrender; as Stalin dangled mediation offers to Japan while secretly preparing to fight in the Pacific; as Tokyo peace advocates desperately tried to stave off a war party determined to mount a last-ditch defense; and as the Americans struggled to balance their competing interests of ending the war with Japan and preventing the Soviets from expanding into the Pacific.Authoritative and engrossing; Racing the Enemy puts the final days of World War II into a whole new light.
#1226771 in Books Harvard University Press 2002-11-30 2002-10-08Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.25 x .84 x 6.13l; .95 #File Name: 0674009983336 pages
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. How Americans went from hearing divine voices to silence and disenchantment.By Shamgar with an Ox GoadIn this book Leigh Eric Schmidt; one of the leading experts in the study of American religion; tries to come to grips with how the enlightenment has caused American’s views on religion to change. He’s interested in how people went from a world to seemly inhabited by supernatural voices and other presences to one that is silent. Schmidt focuses of hearing; chronicling both a period in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries where people felt they heard God or angels speaking as well as the efforts of skeptics and rationalists to disenchant the modern world. The book touches on an astounding array of ideas; with chapters about Swedenborgianism; ventriloquism and skeptic’s efforts to debunk ancient oracles. Despite the diverse array of sources the book never seems to veer too far off topic.This is a book that is targeted mostly at academic specialists in the field of religious studies or intellectual history; though it could conceivably be of interest to an advanced undergraduate. It would be highly useful to anyone studying atheism; secularism; religious experience; mysticism or the effects of the enlightenment in America. Highly recommended.
