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Rain of Ruin

By Richard Overy

Rain of Ruin

0 - Used - very good
Description
A remarkable account of the terrible climax of the Second World War in Asia A Telegraph Book of the Year 2025 'A short but quietly devastating book, in which Overy adds new perspectives to a subject that has often been approached from a narrowly American angle... Overy's book is a sombre reminder that the border between civilisation and savagery is wafer-thin.' - Philip Snow, Literary Review In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try to end the war. Richard Overy's remarkable new book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombing. This book explores the way in which the willingness to kill civilians and destroy cities became normalized in the course of a horrific war as moral concerns were blunted and scientists, airmen, and politicians followed a strategy of mass destruction they would never have endorsed before the war began. But it also engages with the new scholarship that shows how complex the effort to end the war was in Japan, where 'surrender' was entirely foreign to Japanese culture.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
224
Release Date:
2026-03-05
Publication Date:
2026-03-05
Publisher:
Penguin Books Ltd (UK)
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1802065970
ISBN13:
9781802065978
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
180 g
Height:
126 cm
Width:
194 cm
Thickness:
15 cm
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