A fine account of an American diplomat who did his best to contain Japanese ambitions in the run-up to World War II.
How a skilled ambassador tried to rein in a wildly dysfunctional nation.
Historian Kemper speeds over the early life of Joseph Grew (1880-1965), who preferred travel to the lucrative family business. He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1904 and rose steadily. Appointed ambassador to Japan in 1932, he served until World War II broke out. Japan had a constitution and elected parliament but also a godlike emperor. “To ensure this infallibility,” writes the author, “he wasn’t allowed to make any decisions, nor could he be held responsible for decisions made by others.” The military swore loyalty to the emperor, not the constitution, so it was largely uncontrollable. Young, jingoistic officers regularly murdered their superiors or civilian officials who seemed insufficiently bellicose, proclaimed that they acted out of love for the emperor, and were treated with kid gloves. In this richly detailed narrative, Kemper emphasizes that Japan had genuine grievances against the West. The U.S. prohibited many Asian immigrants, and many states forbade Japanese from becoming citizens or owning property. Japanese leaders denounced Western imperialism—not because it was unjust but because they believed that Japan, not the West, deserved to rule the Asian world. Grew arrived after Japan had annexed Manchuria and would later invade China. This produced outrage in America, including among his superiors. Although equally unsympathetic, Grew explained that since America had no intention of using force, outrage alone produced irritation without accomplishing anything. His goal as a diplomat was to win respect from the Japanese and encourage more enlightened behavior. Grew himself did not rate his chances highly, and readers know how matters turned out, but Kemper’s compelling history gives him high marks for winning popularity among the people and trust from Japanese leaders—far more than other Western diplomats. He accomplished this despite understanding that he was dealing with a deeply flawed government willing to commit hara-kiri in pursuit of its goals, which it proceeded to do.
A fine account of an American diplomat who did his best to contain Japanese ambitions in the run-up to World War II.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-06474-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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