Nanking : Anatomy of an Atrocity

Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000. Fine condition in a bright and shiny Near Fine dust jacket. The jacket would also be FINE but for just a little surface rubbing. NO chips. NO tears. A square, tight copy. Sharp corners. NO owner's name or bookplate. NO remainder mark. Pages are fresh and crisp. NO underlining. NO highlighting. NO margin notes. Illustrated with maps and charts. Four appendices. Lists of chapter notes/sources. Bibliography. Index. Bound in the original black boards lettered in shiny silver on the spine. From the publisher: "The Rape of Nanking, an incident that has been characterized as an Asian counterpart to the Nazi Holocaust, is a tragedy that will not soon be forgotten. Masahiro Yamamoto offers an in-depth and startling examination of the horrific massacres carried out by the Japanese in Nanking in 1937. Utilizing many unmined sources, both Chinese and Japanese, this book challenges the prevailing view that the Rape of Nanking was a deliberate, planned effort on the part of the Japanese military and concludes that it was instead a horrible but unfortunate tragedy of conventional warfare with precedents in both Eastern and Western military history. In addition, post-war events such as the war crimes trials and the impact of the Holocaust on Europe affected public opinion regarding Nanking and led to a dramatic reinterpretation of events. This is a revisionist study, in the sense that it reaches conclusions at variance with the currently accepted version of events... [The author] casts serious doubt on the idea that the Rape of Nanking was the result of an overall plan or policy to terrorize the Chinese population. No other book gives such a detailed depiction of exactly what transpired, day-by-day, in Nanking.". Hardcover. Fine condition/Near Fine dust jacket. Illus. by Rossiter, Richard (jacket design). 8vo. xv, 353pp.