The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945.

TOLAND, John.

Item Number: 126373

New York: Random House, 1970.

Early printing of the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle of the rise and fall of the Empire of Japan during World War II. Octavo, original cloth decorated in gilt, cartographic endpapers, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “Sept 21, 1975 Danbury, CT To Dr. Eberhard Jäckel – with the best wishes of the author – John Toland.” The recipient, Eberhard Jäckel was a German historian. In the 1980’s he was a principal protagonist in the Historians’ Dispute (Historikerstreit) over how to incorporate Nazi Germany and the Holocaust into German historiography. Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Wladisaw Finne.

A chronicle of the rise and fall of the Empire of Japan during World War II, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is in the author's words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened—muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."