I had always wanted to be a writer, since childhood and I had always been a voracious reader of history. You did not start writing history books until you’d successful careers in two other fields. I prefer to weave the strands of politics and foreign policy into the fabric of the narrative. I believe that military histories have tended to take a “stay in your lane” approach, adhering to accounts of battles and operations. The dilemma was essentially the same for my Pacific War trilogy. I had to tell the entire story of the early American republic, its major political and diplomatic challenges, order to place the military history in context. While researching my first book, Six Frigates, I concluded that a history of naval operations for that period was insufficient. What were your challenges in accomplishing this?Ī. Iwo Jima) and a “macro view” of the strategic discussions by FDR and the Joint Chiefs. Twilight of the Gods is one of the few WWII histories in which the author includes both detailed battle scenes (e.g. He then worked as an equity research analyst at three major investment banks before quitting to become an author.
Senator Paul Sarbanes and a New York lieutenant governor. After graduating with master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he served as a political aide to U.S. Toll has an unusual background for best-selling historian. Why did we make our first stand against the Japanese at Guadalcanal and not another island? Why did Iwo Jima cost so many Marine casualties? And why was the Japanese Zero so deadly in the first years of the war? Twilight of the Gods answers these questions and gives the reader thrilling eyewitness accounts of the major battles of the war’s last year. His first two volumes covered the earlier years, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-42 and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944. Twilight of the Godsis the last of Toll’s magisterial, three-volume account of World War II in the Pacific. decision-makers who picked the commanders and determined long-term strategy. Toll’s unique approach is to skillfully interweave narratives of the bloody, on-the-ground combat with an in-depth look at the Washington D.C. The second type is the “big picture” or strategic view, such as A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, by Gerhard Weinberg. One example is Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, which was the basis for the HBO mini-series The Pacific.
The first is the hour-by-hour account of individual battles, often told via accounts of individual soldiers. Books about World War II generally fall into two categories.
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