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John Willard Toland

Author profile

born

June 29, 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, The United States

died

June 04, 2004

gender

male

genre

History, Nonfiction

About this author

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John Willard Toland (June 29, 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin - January 4, 2004 in Danbury, Connecticut) was an American author and historian. He is best known for his biography of Adolf Hitler.[1]

Toland tried to write history as a straightforward narrative, with minimal analysis or judgment. This method may have stemmed from his original goal of becoming a playwright. In the summers between his college years, he travelled with hobos and wrote several plays with hobos as central characters, none of which achieved the stage.[2] At one point he managed to publish an article on dirigibles in Look magazine; it proved extremely popular and led to his career as a historian.

One exception to his general approach is his Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aft...more John Willard Toland (June 29, 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin - January 4, 2004 in Danbury, Connecticut) was an American author and historian. He is best known for his biography of Adolf Hitler.[1]

Toland tried to write history as a straightforward narrative, with minimal analysis or judgment. This method may have stemmed from his original goal of becoming a playwright. In the summers between his college years, he travelled with hobos and wrote several plays with hobos as central characters, none of which achieved the stage.[2] At one point he managed to publish an article on dirigibles in Look magazine; it proved extremely popular and led to his career as a historian.

One exception to his general approach is his Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath about the Pearl Harbor attack and the investigations of it, in which he wrote about evidence that President Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance of plans to attack the naval base but remained silent. The book was widely criticized at the time. Since the original publication, Toland added new evidence and rebutted early critics. Also, an anonymous source, known as "Seaman Z" (Robert D. Ogg) has since come forth to publicly tell his story.

Perhaps his most important work, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971, is The Rising Sun. Based on original and extensive interviews with high Japanese officials who survived the war, the book chronicles Imperial Japan from the military rebellion of February 1936 to the end of World War II. The book won the Pulitzer because it was the first book in English to tell the history of the war in the Pacific from the Japanese point of view, rather than from an American perspective.

The stories of the battles for the stepping stones to Japan, the islands in the Pacific which had come under Japanese domination, are told from the perspective of the commander sitting in his cave rather than from that of the heroic forces engaged in the assault. Most of these commanders committed suicide at the conclusion of the battle, but Toland was able to reconstruct their viewpoint from letters to their wives and from reports they sent to Tokyo. Toland died in 2004 of pneumonia.

While predominantly a non-fiction author, Toland also wrote two historical novels, Gods of War and Occupation. He says in his autobiography that he earned little money from his Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Rising Sun, but was set for life from the earnings of his biography of Hitler, for which he also did original research.

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Average rating: 4.03 · 1,630 ratings · 132 reviews · 27 distinct works

	The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-45 4.17 avg rating — 454 ratings — published 1970 — 16 editions	My rating:
	Adolf Hitler 4.04 avg rating — 466 ratings — published 1976 — 23 editions	My rating:
	The Last 100 Days 4.14 avg rating — 168 ratings — published 1966 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath 3.83 avg rating — 143 ratings — published 1982 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Battle: The Story of the Bulge by John Willard Toland, Carlo D'Este (Introduction) 3.88 avg rating — 127 ratings — published 1959 — 12 editions	My rating:
	No Man's Land: 1918, The Last Year of the Great War 4.01 avg rating — 76 ratings — published 1980 — 8 editions	My rating:
	In Mortal Combat by John Willard Toland, Carolyn Blakemore 3.86 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 1991 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Dillinger Days 3.63 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1968	My rating:
	The Flying Tigers 3.88 avg rating — 33 ratings — published 1963 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Gods of War 3.59 avg rating — 32 ratings — published 1985 — 2 editions	My rating:

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John's Fans (12)

John Willard Toland

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by John Willard Toland

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by John Willard Toland