Reviews
"The response to a natural disaster often reveals uncomfortable truths about a society -- think, for example, of Hurricane Katrina. Joshua Hammer's fast-paced, intriguing account of a less familiar but even greater catastrophe shows how the brutal response to it laid bare similar uncomfortable truths that eerily foreshadow Japan's role in launching World War II." -- Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, " Yokohama Burning is a book filled with chaos and movement, but it's also like a painting, with its images frozen forever in time. A hand reaches out for a porcelain cup; a boy kneels at a low Japanese table; people gather around the bar of a private club, the expressions on their faces just beginning to change. Joshua Hammer masterfully assembles the pieces of this story and unfurls them with such skill that not only are we caught up in the lives and deaths of his subjects, we come to see the Japanese earthquake of 1923 as a dividing line: on one side, a lost and simpler world; after, a march to war, and to darker and more familiar times." -- Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World, "Josh Hammer has written a compelling tale of both individual tragedy and resilience, as well as a finely wrought account of a Japan in the throes of social and political transition. In a few shattering minutes, the Yokohama earthquake, symbolically and in some measure actually, jolted Japan onto a path of militarism that would shadow Asia for decades to come." -- Edward A. Gargan, author of The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong, "The response to a natural disaster often reveals uncomfortable truths about a society -- think, for example, of Hurricane Katrina. Joshua Hammer's fast-paced, intriguing account of a less familiar but even greater catastrophe shows how the brutal response to it laid bare similar uncomfortable truths that eerily foreshadow Japan's role in launching World War II." -- Adam Hochschild, author ofKing Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, "Yokohama Burningis a book filled with chaos and movement, but it's also like a painting, with its images frozen forever in time. A hand reaches out for a porcelain cup; a boy kneels at a low Japanese table; people gather around the bar of a private club, the expressions on their faces just beginning to change. Joshua Hammer masterfully assembles the pieces of this story and unfurls them with such skill that not only are we caught up in the lives and deaths of his subjects, we come to see the Japanese earthquake of 1923 as a dividing line: on one side, a lost and simpler world; after, a march to war, and to darker and more familiar times." -- Russell Shorto, author ofThe Island at the Center of the World, "Josh Hammer has written a compelling tale of both individual tragedy and resilience, as well as a finely wrought account of a Japan in the throes of social and political transition. In a few shattering minutes, the Yokohama earthquake, symbolically and in some measure actually, jolted Japan onto a path of militarism that would shadow Asia for decades to come." -- Edward A. Gargan, author ofThe River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong
