Warlord

Edwin P. Hoyt is the author of "Japan's War", "The GI's War", "Hitler's War", and "Inferno".

This biography of Japanese army general and dictatorial prime minister Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) covers his early, easy World War II victories (including Pearl Harbor); his subsequent crushing defeats; and his trial and execution as a war criminal.Vilified in the West as the Japanese equivalent of Hitler, Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) was in fact cut from very different cloth. Lacking the skills and charisma of a statesman, fueled by no apocalyptic visions, Tojo was an unimaginative soldier whose primary goals were to establish Japan's military strength and serve his emperor. Yet his determination and ambition caused him to participate in the seizure of power when the military took over the government. WWII scholar Hoyt, a resident of Japan, relies on new sources and remarkable insight to show how Tojo and the leaders of Japan's armed forces gained control of the country, but how ambition ultimately proved to be Tojo's undoing.