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bedsitter23Well, we talked about this, y'know, and like it or not, BillO is one of the most successful writers of 'history' nowadays, and well, it's gift season, so....
You know all about the "Killing.." franchise, which is a dumb title, but is the kind of shock that BillO trades in. Killing WW2-era Japan is a bit of a stretch for the series that has to this point mainly talked about the individuals and their demise (See Bill O has got me doing the purple prose). If you recall, I was not impressed with my only other journey through the "Killing" fields (get it?)- the JFK book which was self-important, but also very light reading, and about all I remember was the emphasis on MLKs infidelities.
I could tell right away KtRS was different and it is. It may be surprising given my view on Bill O, but I am going to say a lot of nice things about this book. For starters, there are a lot of facts that are stored in this book (mostly trivia style facts). This really appealed to me as I felt like I learned a bunch. Given the format, much of this information was added as footnotes. This kept the story clean and simple but also added color.
This being something considered "Popular History", this book actually works really well. It stays fairly shallow, but that's what most people will want when they pick up this book, and at the very least, it should be what most people would expect from this series. That said, i really did enjoy this book. it wasn't as lightweight as his JFK book, which had little to no impact on me.
So given what this book is trying to accomplish, it succeeds. 20 years ago, this would have been called "MTV style". I suppose now they would call it "Social media-style journalism" or maybe today this is just "journalism". Appropriate to his beginnings, this is not Max Hastings, this is WW2 as if it had been covered by Inside Edition.
We are given striking portraits of the characters- Truman, MacArthur,Oppenheimer, Tojo, Hirohito, Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets- but we move on quickly. for example, we get Oppenheimer in Los Alamos- almost an Ellroy character- fixated on the moral quandary of what he is part of, susceptible to drink and infidelity, and as soon as he appeared, he's gone. Oppenheimer gets ten pages total. The others fare slightly better but not by much.
To me , the book feels like someone read six or seven great WW2 books, and then devoted two chapters of this book to each one of those. Again, less a complaint than an observation, as I do think that is the intent, and since this will serve as introductory history to some, I really don't have a major problem with that.
I did have a couple of problems with the book. One is O'Reilly's exploitative style. Kamikaze pilots, atomic fallout and radiation effects, the Rape of Nanking, The Baatan Death March, POW camps, "Comfort Women"- all of these are worth of discussion but BillO seems to take a perverse thrill in describing them in titillating and shocking fashion. Besides veering towards bad taste, it also makes me wonder how fast and loose he is playing with other facts in the book.
The other problem is ostensibly the moral dilemma at the heart of this book is whether we should have dropped the boms. Though BillO gives some lip service to the opposing view (Ike opposed it, various players struggled with the moral dilemma years after the fact), it is handled in such a heavy handed way that you know what the answer is supposed to be.
As far as extras, BillO asked former Presidents if they would have dropped the bomb, and those who responded (Carter, Bush 41 and 43) wrote back to say they would have. BillO has also got his hands on a Truman memo about MacArthur which he includes here. He also pays tribute to his dad, a WW2 Pacific Theater veteran. I have no problem with that. In fact, I thought it was a nice touch, and thought maybe it was too heavy handed, and actually could have been even better.
So overall, it's going to surprise soem of you, but I liked this one, though you should go in with the usual expectations.
You know all about the "Killing.." franchise, which is a dumb title, but is the kind of shock that BillO trades in. Killing WW2-era Japan is a bit of a stretch for the series that has to this point mainly talked about the individuals and their demise (See Bill O has got me doing the purple prose). If you recall, I was not impressed with my only other journey through the "Killing" fields (get it?)- the JFK book which was self-important, but also very light reading, and about all I remember was the emphasis on MLKs infidelities.
I could tell right away KtRS was different and it is. It may be surprising given my view on Bill O, but I am going to say a lot of nice things about this book. For starters, there are a lot of facts that are stored in this book (mostly trivia style facts). This really appealed to me as I felt like I learned a bunch. Given the format, much of this information was added as footnotes. This kept the story clean and simple but also added color.
This being something considered "Popular History", this book actually works really well. It stays fairly shallow, but that's what most people will want when they pick up this book, and at the very least, it should be what most people would expect from this series. That said, i really did enjoy this book. it wasn't as lightweight as his JFK book, which had little to no impact on me.
So given what this book is trying to accomplish, it succeeds. 20 years ago, this would have been called "MTV style". I suppose now they would call it "Social media-style journalism" or maybe today this is just "journalism". Appropriate to his beginnings, this is not Max Hastings, this is WW2 as if it had been covered by Inside Edition.
We are given striking portraits of the characters- Truman, MacArthur,Oppenheimer, Tojo, Hirohito, Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets- but we move on quickly. for example, we get Oppenheimer in Los Alamos- almost an Ellroy character- fixated on the moral quandary of what he is part of, susceptible to drink and infidelity, and as soon as he appeared, he's gone. Oppenheimer gets ten pages total. The others fare slightly better but not by much.
To me , the book feels like someone read six or seven great WW2 books, and then devoted two chapters of this book to each one of those. Again, less a complaint than an observation, as I do think that is the intent, and since this will serve as introductory history to some, I really don't have a major problem with that.
I did have a couple of problems with the book. One is O'Reilly's exploitative style. Kamikaze pilots, atomic fallout and radiation effects, the Rape of Nanking, The Baatan Death March, POW camps, "Comfort Women"- all of these are worth of discussion but BillO seems to take a perverse thrill in describing them in titillating and shocking fashion. Besides veering towards bad taste, it also makes me wonder how fast and loose he is playing with other facts in the book.
The other problem is ostensibly the moral dilemma at the heart of this book is whether we should have dropped the boms. Though BillO gives some lip service to the opposing view (Ike opposed it, various players struggled with the moral dilemma years after the fact), it is handled in such a heavy handed way that you know what the answer is supposed to be.
As far as extras, BillO asked former Presidents if they would have dropped the bomb, and those who responded (Carter, Bush 41 and 43) wrote back to say they would have. BillO has also got his hands on a Truman memo about MacArthur which he includes here. He also pays tribute to his dad, a WW2 Pacific Theater veteran. I have no problem with that. In fact, I thought it was a nice touch, and thought maybe it was too heavy handed, and actually could have been even better.
So overall, it's going to surprise soem of you, but I liked this one, though you should go in with the usual expectations.
