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Gods of War
The rivalry of World War II strains the close bond between the American McGlynn family and the Japanese Toda family
598 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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About the author
John Toland
40 books197 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
John^Toland - 17th century theologian, Philosopher & Satirist
John^^Toland - American writer and historian (WWII & Dillinger)
John^^^Toland - Article: "The Man who Reads Minds"
John Willard Toland (June 29, 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin - January 4, 2004 in Danbury, Connecticut) was an American author and historian. He is best known for his biography of Adolf Hitler.[1]
Toland tried to write history as a straightforward narrative, with minimal analysis or judgment. This method may have stemmed from his original goal of becoming a playwright. In the summers between his college years, he travelled with hobos and wrote several plays with hobos as central characters, none of which achieved the stage.[2] At one point he managed to publish an article on dirigibles in Look magazine; it proved extremely popular and led to his career as a historian.
One exception to his general approach is his Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath about the Pearl Harbor attack and the investigations of it, in which he wrote about evidence that President Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance of plans to attack the naval base but remained silent. The book was widely criticized at the time. Since the original publication, Toland added new evidence and rebutted early critics. Also, an anonymous source, known as "Seaman Z" (Robert D. Ogg) has since come forth to publicly tell his story.
Perhaps his most important work, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971, is The Rising Sun. Based on original and extensive interviews with high Japanese officials who survived the war, the book chronicles Imperial Japan from the military rebellion of February 1936 to the end of World War II. The book won the Pulitzer because it was the first book in English to tell the history of the war in the Pacific from the Japanese point of view, rather than from an American perspective.
The stories of the battles for the stepping stones to Japan, the islands in the Pacific which had come under Japanese domination, are told from the perspective of the commander sitting in his cave rather than from that of the heroic forces engaged in the assault. Most of these commanders committed suicide at the conclusion of the battle, but Toland was able to reconstruct their viewpoint from letters to their wives and from reports they sent to Tokyo. Toland died in 2004 of pneumonia.
While predominantly a non-fiction author, Toland also wrote two historical novels, Gods of War and Occupation. He says in his autobiography that he earned little money from his Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Rising Sun, but was set for life from the earnings of his biography of Hitler, for which he also did original research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tol...
John^Toland - 17th century theologian, Philosopher & Satirist
John^^Toland - American writer and historian (WWII & Dillinger)
John^^^Toland - Article: "The Man who Reads Minds"
John Willard Toland (June 29, 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin - January 4, 2004 in Danbury, Connecticut) was an American author and historian. He is best known for his biography of Adolf Hitler.[1]
Toland tried to write history as a straightforward narrative, with minimal analysis or judgment. This method may have stemmed from his original goal of becoming a playwright. In the summers between his college years, he travelled with hobos and wrote several plays with hobos as central characters, none of which achieved the stage.[2] At one point he managed to publish an article on dirigibles in Look magazine; it proved extremely popular and led to his career as a historian.
One exception to his general approach is his Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath about the Pearl Harbor attack and the investigations of it, in which he wrote about evidence that President Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance of plans to attack the naval base but remained silent. The book was widely criticized at the time. Since the original publication, Toland added new evidence and rebutted early critics. Also, an anonymous source, known as "Seaman Z" (Robert D. Ogg) has since come forth to publicly tell his story.
Perhaps his most important work, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971, is The Rising Sun. Based on original and extensive interviews with high Japanese officials who survived the war, the book chronicles Imperial Japan from the military rebellion of February 1936 to the end of World War II. The book won the Pulitzer because it was the first book in English to tell the history of the war in the Pacific from the Japanese point of view, rather than from an American perspective.
The stories of the battles for the stepping stones to Japan, the islands in the Pacific which had come under Japanese domination, are told from the perspective of the commander sitting in his cave rather than from that of the heroic forces engaged in the assault. Most of these commanders committed suicide at the conclusion of the battle, but Toland was able to reconstruct their viewpoint from letters to their wives and from reports they sent to Tokyo. Toland died in 2004 of pneumonia.
While predominantly a non-fiction author, Toland also wrote two historical novels, Gods of War and Occupation. He says in his autobiography that he earned little money from his Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Rising Sun, but was set for life from the earnings of his biography of Hitler, for which he also did original research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tol...
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 25, 2015
John Toland's novel "Gods of War" is one of those epic historical novels that was immensely popular in the '70s and '80s, most of them written by the likes of James Michener, Leon Uris, or Herman Wouk.
I happen to enjoy those kinds of novels, having read several of them, but I am well aware that these kinds of novels are no longer in style. It's a shame, really, that big is no longer better. Not that big was ever really better, mind you, but, as a bibliophile, there is nothing more satisfying than a heavy tome resting in one's lap.
Alas, I digress...
"Gods of War" is about the war in the Pacific, starting with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and ending with the dropping of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, told through the stories of two fictional families: the McGlynns (an American family) and the Todas (a Japanese family).
The novel starts in 1936 in Tokyo at the wedding of Tadashi Toda and Floss McGlynn. It is a beautiful event, marking the union of two successful families from two very different cultures.
Hanging over their heads, however, is the growing war in Europe and the potential entrance of Japan into the war. Even though the reader knows what is coming next, Toland manages to make the events at Pearl Harbor seem intense and suspenseful. More than that, he makes the events of the Pacific theater feel vital and significant (which, of course, they are) in a very real and believable way, as we see the war through the eyes of the characters.
Will, the eldest son of Professor Frank McGlynn, is a naval officer who is taken prisoner by the Japanese.
Mark, the youngest son, enlists in the Marines.
Maggie, Mark's twin sister, is a foreign news correspondent.
Shogo Toda, the Todas' middle son, is a Japanese army officer. Sumiko, the daughter, is a nurse.
Amongst the fictional characters, we are also introduced to many real people: President Franklin Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Emperor Hirohito, and Ernie Pyle, just to name a few.
Toland is a masterful storyteller whose real gift is his eye for historical detail. Indeed, this is both a positive and negative sometimes. At times, the novel reads more like a history textbook than historical fiction. A minor complaint (for someone like me, at least, who actually likes history), unless you are the kind of reader who does not like to get bogged down by occasional history lectures. The saving grace is very well-drawn and likable characters.
"Gods of War" is an excellent look at an unfortunate but important period in history for two great nations.
I happen to enjoy those kinds of novels, having read several of them, but I am well aware that these kinds of novels are no longer in style. It's a shame, really, that big is no longer better. Not that big was ever really better, mind you, but, as a bibliophile, there is nothing more satisfying than a heavy tome resting in one's lap.
Alas, I digress...
"Gods of War" is about the war in the Pacific, starting with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and ending with the dropping of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, told through the stories of two fictional families: the McGlynns (an American family) and the Todas (a Japanese family).
The novel starts in 1936 in Tokyo at the wedding of Tadashi Toda and Floss McGlynn. It is a beautiful event, marking the union of two successful families from two very different cultures.
Hanging over their heads, however, is the growing war in Europe and the potential entrance of Japan into the war. Even though the reader knows what is coming next, Toland manages to make the events at Pearl Harbor seem intense and suspenseful. More than that, he makes the events of the Pacific theater feel vital and significant (which, of course, they are) in a very real and believable way, as we see the war through the eyes of the characters.
Will, the eldest son of Professor Frank McGlynn, is a naval officer who is taken prisoner by the Japanese.
Mark, the youngest son, enlists in the Marines.
Maggie, Mark's twin sister, is a foreign news correspondent.
Shogo Toda, the Todas' middle son, is a Japanese army officer. Sumiko, the daughter, is a nurse.
Amongst the fictional characters, we are also introduced to many real people: President Franklin Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Emperor Hirohito, and Ernie Pyle, just to name a few.
Toland is a masterful storyteller whose real gift is his eye for historical detail. Indeed, this is both a positive and negative sometimes. At times, the novel reads more like a history textbook than historical fiction. A minor complaint (for someone like me, at least, who actually likes history), unless you are the kind of reader who does not like to get bogged down by occasional history lectures. The saving grace is very well-drawn and likable characters.
"Gods of War" is an excellent look at an unfortunate but important period in history for two great nations.
May 31, 2024
Novelist John Toland has drawn heavily upon the work of historian John Toland in this novel about the Second World War in the Pacific. Gods of War is the first of two books, the other being Occupation, to tell the story of the conflict between Imperial Japan and the United States with characters representing both Japanese and American points of view and experiences of that war. The author’s list of both fictional and historical characters fills almost three pages and is about evenly divided between actual people and his fictional much extended family of Americans and Japanese linked by marriage between a young Japanese diplomat and the daughter of an American academic who spent many years in Japan. Almost 600 pages long, these characters are put hard to work experiencing that conflict at many key moments and places from Washington DC to Tokyo to the Philippines, and across several of the Pacific islands defended by Japan and seized by the US as its forces advanced towards the Japanese home islands. The book itself is a fairly straightforward recounting of the war’s major incidents and many supporting episodes that bring together the experience of war by civilians and combatants from Japan and the United States. There are also several pages of notes naming historical models for characters and sources for many of the incidents represented in the novel. If you’re interested in a more nuanced telling of the war in the Pacific or how our histories of that conflict have evolved I can recommend this book and its sequel Occupation (which I admit I have not yet gotten to read).
July 10, 2020
Most of what I know about WWII involved the war in Europe. While set in novel form, this book intends to convey the truth of the war with Japan from the vantage point of many members of two different families, one Japanese and one American, who are close friends with each other.
The author does a great job of interweaving the facts and horrors of the various turning points (Pearl Harbor, Midway, Bataan Death March, MacArthur's pullout, POW camps, etc.) in a compelling narrative that keeps the reader interested and learning at the same time.
The author does a great job of interweaving the facts and horrors of the various turning points (Pearl Harbor, Midway, Bataan Death March, MacArthur's pullout, POW camps, etc.) in a compelling narrative that keeps the reader interested and learning at the same time.
January 30, 2009
The author claims that he can write a truer history of WWII in the Pacific in the form of a novel rather than an academic history. The history seems well-researched and accurate. His skills as a novelist are not entirely up to the task but the book did teach me some history.
January 19, 2023
Toland is not a great novelist but he is a historian and he knows his stuff. This is kind of a “Winds of War” but just for the Pacific Theater, not the entirety of WWII. It makes for compelling reading.
January 28, 2025
A more traditional epic novel popular in the 70s. Well-defined, developed characters and timeline. I enjoyed John Toland as a non-fiction writer as opposed to his venture into fiction. His work on the fall of the Japanese empire is excellent and well worth the read.
October 25, 2022
This book gives insight to condition experienced during this time in history. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested the history of the pacific in WW2.
July 5, 2023
For a book with so many words, it has a habit of telling the important bits in very few.
February 23, 2015
When I first read John Toland’s mammoth novel “Gods of War” I had not been to Japan - or Singapore, for that matter. Whether it has been the passage of years or the first hand experience of Japan that has enhanced my reading of this book, you can believe that when I recently revisited it, it was with greater appreciation than ever.
Toland predominantly writes history, and both his novels about the McGlynn and Toda families are really history conveyed through a fictional narrative – a family drama that gives perspectives from both sides of the WWII conflict in the Asia Pacific region.
The McGlynns and Todas are linked by marriage. They have contacts in high places, right up to the head of their respective governments. But it does not make them immune from the deadly consequences of war between their nations.
From conquest to liberation, from the oppressed to the oppressors, from the aggressors to the would-be moderators, “Gods of War” takes us to the forefront of most of the major battles from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki.
Written in 1985, “Gods of War” remains a benchmark for war novels. I’ve (belatedly) ordered a copy of its successor, which continues the story of both families. It’s called “Occupation”, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Kerry Hennigan
February 2015
Toland predominantly writes history, and both his novels about the McGlynn and Toda families are really history conveyed through a fictional narrative – a family drama that gives perspectives from both sides of the WWII conflict in the Asia Pacific region.
The McGlynns and Todas are linked by marriage. They have contacts in high places, right up to the head of their respective governments. But it does not make them immune from the deadly consequences of war between their nations.
From conquest to liberation, from the oppressed to the oppressors, from the aggressors to the would-be moderators, “Gods of War” takes us to the forefront of most of the major battles from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki.
Written in 1985, “Gods of War” remains a benchmark for war novels. I’ve (belatedly) ordered a copy of its successor, which continues the story of both families. It’s called “Occupation”, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Kerry Hennigan
February 2015
September 5, 2019
I have no doubt that the author is very well versed in history. That is not in question at all. John Toland is a highly accomplished historical writer from what I have researched. I do not think the author is a very good fiction writer. The story was not written well and that really degrades from the immersion that your supposed to feel when you read historical fiction. Its a bit of a shame because I agree completely with that he states in the into; that the pacific war is under represented in the narrative and misunderstood. I wanted very much for this book to be good. It's very awkwardly executed. It does succeed in showing how the war was fundamentally different than the war in Europe and in some aspects a lot more complex.
December 21, 2012
ww11 pacific, told both sides in form of novel
January 26, 2017
Really great. Pre WWII & WWII Japan. US Ambassador to Japan and US Japanese Family
September 5, 2019
I read it too long ago to comment on it... Perhaps I'll read again... throw it on the 'read again' pile.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews