by John W. Dower (Author)
Drawing on decades of experience and research, John W. Dower, author of the award-winning War Without Mercy, highlights for the first time the resemblances between wartime, postwar, and contemporary Japan. He argues persuasively that the origins of many of the institutions responsible for Japan's dominant position in today's global economy derive from the rapid military industrialization of the 1930s, and not from the post-occupation period, as many have assumed. A brilliant lead essay, "The Useful War," sets the tone for the volume by incisively showing how much of Japan's postwar political and economic structure was prefigured in the wartime organization of that country.
Author Biography
John W. Dower is a professor of history, emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-founded MIT s online Visualizing Cultures project, which uses visual materials to reexamine the experience of Japan and China in the modern world. Dower is the author of "Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays," and "Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World," both published by The New Press. He is also the author of the National Book Award finalist "Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq" and of "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II," which was the recipient of numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History, and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Prize; both books were co-published by The New Press and W.W. Norton & Company. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
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