Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Most Controversial World War II General

by Peter Mauch

Tojo by Peter Mauch is a biography of Tojo Hideki, who rose through the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Army and went on to become prime minister of Japan during World War II. As you follow his career and rise to the top of Japanese politics, you not only get insight into his life, but also begin to understand the decisions and thinking behind Japan’s invasion of China and the war in the Pacific against the United States. It’s a perspective that’s mostly neglected, as most of us in the West grew up reading (and watching movies) about it from the Allied point of view.  Tojo was eventually hanged as a war criminal in 1948.