Retribution, Max Hastings
Retribution, Max Hastings
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Retribution
The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

Author: Max Hastings

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 27 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/18/2008

Synopsis

In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan.

By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama–that ended in Japan’s utter devastation–was acted out across the vast stage of Asia. In recounting the saga of this time and place, Max Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the theater’s key figures–MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors–American, British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese–caught in some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns.

With unprecedented insight, Hastings discusses Japan’s war against China, now all but forgotten in the West, MacArthur’s follies in the Philippines, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria. He analyzes the decision-making process that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki–which, he convincingly argues, ultimately saved lives. Finally, he delves into the Japanese wartime mind-set, which caused an otherwise civilized society to carry out atrocities that haunt the nation to this day. RETRIBUTION is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers.

About The Author

Max Hastings is the author of more than 20 books, including Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War; Inferno: The World at War, 1939–1945; and Winston's War: Churchill, 1940–1945. He spent his early career as a foreign correspondent for BBC TV and various newspapers, then as editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. Hastings has received numerous awards for both his books and his journalism. He lives in the English countryside west of London.Simon Vance is a stage, TV, and film actor who has narrated more than 200 audiobooks for which he has won multiple AudioFile Earphone Awards and Audie nominations. He has also been selected as an AudioFile Golden Voice. Formerly a BBC Radio newsreader in London, he now resides in Northern California.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Anthony on September 27, 2023

How the War Ended. Sir Max Hastings’ telling of the last days of the Pacific Conflict is excellent. He never disappoints when delivering history and once again he delivers an opinionated, well balanced and fascinating account of the end of the Second World War. They key point and reason for you to re......more

Goodreads review by Boudewijn on June 04, 2021

Another Hastings's classic, fully deserving its four stars. Hastings takes us on a tour of the various battlefields in the latter stage of the Pacific War. Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Burma, but also the lesser known theatres such as China and the Russian invasion of Manchuria. Grand strategy interspersed......more

Goodreads review by Marcus on July 09, 2012

Let me start by pointing out that this is not a book dedicated to a detailed study of offensives, battles and orders of battles. This is not this kind of book. Instead, Max Hastings dedicates this volume to a sweeping narrative of the last twelve months or so of Second World War in the Pacific in As......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on February 05, 2019

This is a remarkable book, worth reading even for those who consider themselves knowledgeable about World War II in the Pacific. It is part strategic overview, part biography of key leaders, part oral history by the soldiers and civilians who lived through it, and part discussion of the decision mak......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on March 21, 2015

Hastings has much excellent research to present, though too much of it went into the writing and not enough of it into thinking about humanity in general. He argues for the true historian's creed, to judge the past based only on what those of the past were presented with, not with what we think they......more

Quotes

"Hastings is a military historian in the grand tradition . . . He is equally adept at analyzing the broad sweep of strategy and creating thrilling set pieces that put the reader in the cockpit of a fighter plane or the conning tower of a submarine."
--Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review

"Compelling . . . To the broad sweep of military events Mr. Hastings adds myriad human stories . . . and he does not hesitate to offer his own keen analysis along the way."
--Peter R. Kann, The Wall Street Journal

"The great merit of Max Hastings's many books on war is his skill at bringing the numbers, as it were, down to earth. Through the imaginative power of his writing, we get an inkling . . . of what it must have been like to slog one's way up a cliff at Iwo Jima, or be firebombed in Tokyo."
--Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

"Hastings has another winner . . . This book is first-rate popular history, stiffened with a strongly stated point of view . . . A close-up and personal look at war as it affected real people, and how it felt to them at the time."--Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Explosive, argumentative, intensely researched . . . Demands to be read. A book of stunning disclosures."--Tom Mackin, Sunday Star-Ledger

"[A] masterful interpretive narrative . . . Hastings is both comprehensive and finely acute."
--Booklist

"Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful. Hastings makes important points about the war in the East that have been all too rarely heard."
--Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph

"A triumph . . . The key to the book's success lies not in its accessibility, nor in its vivid portraits of the key figures in the drama--although it has both--but in something else entirely: the author's supremely confident ambition."
--Laurence Rees, The Sunday Times

"Extraordinary . . . Anyone who believes that we're all living through a uniquely troubled time should read this . . . book."
--Georgie Rose, The Sunday Herald

"This is a book not only for military history buffs but for anyone who wants to understand what happened in half the world during one of the bloodiest periods of the blood-soaked 20th century."
--The Spectator

"Highly readable . . . An admirably balanced re-examination of the last phases of a conflict that it is not fashionable to remember."
--Dan van der Vat, The Guardian

"Engrossing . . . Its originality lies in the meticulousness of the author's research and the amazing witnesses he has found."
--Murray Sayle, The Evening Standard

"Hastings is . . . a master of the sort of detail that illuminates the human cost. It is the way he leaps so adeptly to and fro between the vast panorama and the tiny snapshot pictures that makes him such a readable historian."--Mail on Sunday

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