Westfall Politics & History Series Presents Military Historian John C. McManus
St. Louis County Library Foundation is pleased to host an event with acclaimed military historian John C. McManus, author of “To the End of the Earth: The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945.”
Presented in partnership with SLCL’s Westfall Politics & History Author Series
The event will take place on Wednesday, May 3 at 7:00 p.m. at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd., St. Louis MO 63117.
The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from The Novel Neighbor.
From the liberation of the Philippines to the Japanese surrender, renowned military historian John C. McManus's presents the final volume of his trilogy on the US Army in the Pacific War
The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus’s magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Liberation Trilogy,’” returns with this brilliant final volume.
On the island of Luzon, a months-long stand-off between US and Japanese troops finally breaks open, as American soldiers push into Manila, while paratroopers and amphibious invaders capture nearby Corregidor. The Philippines are soon liberated, and Allied strategists turn their eyes to China, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Japanese home islands themselves. Readers will walk in the boots of American soldiers and officers, braving intense heat, rampant disease, and a by-now suicidal enemy, determined to kill as many opponents as possible before defeat, and they will encounter Japanese soldiers faced with the terrible choice between capitulation or doom. At the same time, this outstanding narrative lays bare the titanic ego and ambition of the Pacific War’s most prominent general, Douglas MacArthur, and the complex challenges he faced in Japan’s unconditional surrender and America’s lengthy occupation.
John C. McManus is an award-winning professor, author, and military historian, and a leading expert on the history of the American combat experience. He is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of U.S. Military History at Missouri University of Science and Technology, and is currently in residence at the U.S. Naval Academy as the Leo A. Shifrin Chair of Naval and Military History. His critically acclaimed books on World War II include “Deadly Sky,” “September Hope,” and “The Dead and Those About to Die.”
Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.