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    Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
    Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
    Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
    Audiobook36 hours

    Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

    Written by Ian W. Toll

    Narrated by P.J. Ochlan

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In June 1944, the United States launched a crushing assault on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
    The capture of the Mariana Islands and the accompanying ruin of Japanese carrier airpower marked a pivotal moment in
    the Pacific War. No tactical masterstroke or blunder could reverse the increasingly lopsided balance of power between the
    two combatants. The War in the Pacific had entered its endgame.

    Beginning with the Honolulu Conference, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with his Pacific theater
    commanders to plan the last phase of the campaign against Japan, Twilight of the Gods brings to life the harrowing last
    year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur
    made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to
    the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were
    vaporized in atomic blasts.

    Ian W. Toll’s narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also reconstructs
    the Japanese and American home fronts and takes the reader into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the
    great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided.

    Drawing from a wealth of rich archival sources and new material, Twilight of the Gods casts a penetrating light on the
    battles, grand strategic decisions, and naval logistics that enabled the Allied victory in the Pacific. An authoritative and
    riveting account of the final phase of the War in the Pacific, Twilight of the Gods brings Toll’s masterful trilogy to a thrilling
    conclusion. This prize-winning and best-selling trilogy will stand as the first complete history of the Pacific War in more
    than twenty-five years, and the first multivolume history of the Pacific naval war since Samuel Eliot Morison’s series was
    published in the 1950s.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 1, 2020
    ISBN9781980090847
    Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
    Author

    Ian W. Toll

    Ian W. Toll has been a Wall Street analyst, a Federal Reserve financial analyst, and a political aide and speechwriter. Six Frigates is his first audiobook. He lives with his wife and two-year-old son in San Francisco.

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    Reviews for Twilight of the Gods

    5/5

    99 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The third volume of Toll's history of the war in the Pacific is powerfully written. All three volumes are clear and informative. Toll does not hesitate to make judgements and to lay blame or to give praise where it is deserved. He evinces a sympathy and understanding of the effects of combat on the soldiers and sailors of both sides. He has presented the best over all picture of the war against Japan that I have read.
    • 5/5
      Astonishing. I've literally read a hundred+ histories of WWII and dozens about the Pacific war . . . I have the two precursors to this book but I really hadn't paid attention to how good they were until I hit this book. This one takes the cake . . . it starts off rather curiously with a large segment about some conference between Roosevelt and MacArthur which I found curiously refreshing, because it indulged in seemingly unimportant details about both men that I had never heard before.

      But it swiftly took off into one of the most detailed and fascinating views on the Pacific war, from both American and Japanese sides, that I have ever read.

      I have 26 hours to go on this book and after I've finished this one I think I'm going to go back to the beginning of his first of the trilogy and space out on that.

      Amazing.
    • 5/5
      Ian Toll has provided us a well-researched, well-written piece of military history, expertly narrated by P. J. Ochlan. Toll covers in great detail both the combat and the politics and does an outstanding job of it--thank you, author and narrator!
    • 5/5
      We’ll researched and narrated. I Thanks for a comprehensive presentation.
      Thanks
    • 5/5
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    • 5/5
      5763. Twilight of the Gods War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945, by Ian W. Toll (read 12 Nov 2021) This the final book in the author's trilogy on the war against Japan. Like the first two books, which I read with much admiration, this book is superbly written, though I thought some of the account and the conclusion could have been done better. The book recounts all of the action in the war in the Pacific from mid-1944 to the end in August 1945 and covers the occupation of Japan by American troops. American battle deaths in the war against Japan were calculated to be 111,606. I was glad my brother was in combat as short a time as he was and remembered well the joy with which he was welcomed home on 30 September 1945 and one's heart must go out to the many homes which did not have such a joyous event. And while there were many Japanese homes which were bereft there would have been even more if the fanatics who resisted the decision to surrender had had their way. This is indeed an awesomely excellent treatment of its subject.
    • 5/5
      Having read the first two books in this series recently, I thought the beginning started a little slow. The beginning of this third book had a fairly large review of the story told in the first two books wrapped around the subject of the "Pacific War and the role of the Press". I found this an odd subject for the beginning of the story.The rest of the book was GREAT! The blend of "Big Picture" thoughts with small interesting anecdotes made the story come alive.
    • 5/5
      This is the final book of a trilogy, following up on the Author’s Pacific Crucible, and The Conquering Tide. It should stand as the definitive three volume treatment of the Pacific theater of World War II relating to naval history.This installment picks up with the aftermath of the Mariannas (Saipan, Guam and Tinian) campaign, and concludes with the American occupation of Japan and subsequent post-War scale down. Included is the reoccupation of the Philippines, the naval battle of Leyte Gulf, the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.I found the first two installments of the trilogy to be nothing short of magnificent. The four-year gap between the second and final volumes certainly whetted the appetite. For whatever reason, this installment failed to measure up to the first two, and I can’t really say why. Certainly, the subject matter is no less compelling. I can only guess that following the first two volumes, expectations were impossible to meet.In any case, the book is extremely well researched and presented. Of particular value to me were the sections dealing with the end game of the war, involving the atomic bombing and the political structure of the Japanese government, its inner workings and the psychologies and cultural overlays involved. I was unaware of the Russians invasion of Manchuria as a possibly deciding factor in the Japanese surrender.If you have an interest in military history, naval warfare, or just enjoy a captivating read, I cannot recommend this trilogy highly enough.
    • 4/5
      The concluding and longest volume. By this point the US had such a massive superiority in material, troops, leadership and technology the only question was how quick, and boy did they move quick. Airplanes were being over-produced at such a rate older models were bulldozed to make room for new. Shiploads of food and ammo sat rotting in jungles for lack of anyone to take it. American posts behind the lines resembled 5-star resorts. America had over-reacted, over-built. And it kept carpet bombing Japan up to the last day, long after it was obvious there was no reason. Japan for its part stupidly sent its entire fleet on a "Banzai" suicide charge and got its wish. The Kamikaze's were amazingly effective, early precision-guided munitions, but it was too little too late and anyway not sustainable. They engaged in atrocities against civilians that no one understands why, but is a reflection of how they treated themselves, as expendable. Beware the nation of suicidals. Having read all three volumes I conclude: the best parts are the first volume (Pearl Harbor and Midway), the first half of the second volume (Guadalcanal) and the second half of the final volume. The middle parts of the war are a repetitive grind and better read on a per-battle basis as there are too many to adequately cover at this scale. Regardless, it's an excellent overview of the important elements and offers a springboard to reading more in detail, of which there are no lack of excellent books.
    • 5/5
      I can only encourage anyone to read one of the other reviews below, as they do a great job of summarizing this great book, and the trilogy. My only criticism is that Mr. Toll spent too much time covering the details of various land battles. I had read other books on these battles, such as Leyte Gulf, so I skimmed through those sections.
    • 5/5
      Twilight of The Gods, was the excellent end of Ian Toll’s Trilogy on the war in the Pacific. Ian Toll seamlessly weaves together the story of the war from 1944-1945 in the Pacific from the perspective of Army, Navy, Marines and Army Air Corp.The perspectives vary from world leaders, Washington leadership, members of the JCS ( Marshall, King and Arnold), theatre commanders such as Nimitz and MacArthur, Fleet commanders like Spruance and Halsey, army, Corp and division commanders like General Walter Krueger, General Robert Eichelberger, Chesty Puller and the common marine soldier and seaman.The story varies from Naval encounters such as Leyte Gulf, land engagement e.g. Guadalcanal, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. The evolution of sub warfare with the likes of Admiral Charles Lockwood, commander Mush Morton, the evolution of the Wolfpack. Strategic bombing under General Curtis LeMay, the fire bombing of Tokyo and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Toll also doesn’t neglect Japanese leadership, Hirohito, army and naval leadership and the common soldier seaman and citizen.The best of a great trilogy and a must read
    • 5/5
      As with the two prior volumes I felt I was experiencing the Pacific war through the eyes of the Americans and the Japanese. The brutality and otherworldliness of the fighting seemed more immediate. It certainly Leaves the reader with a sense of the horror of war. One can't look at a successful war as a grand thingUS naval and air superiority means there is never any doubt that Japan will lose the war. The Japanese challenge is reconciling its defeat with its national character. The brutality of the amphibious landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa show how terrible the battles were for both sides. Clearly the American population advantage and industrial capacity make the outcome inevitable but the Japanese character makes its surrender difficult even after the atomic bombs. Even the emperor's decision to surrender was meet with a threatened coup. Neither MacArthur or Halsey comes off without character flaws. The book ends with the return of the American veterans. They faced challenges getting home and greater challenges when home. Clearly the war changed America in ways never expected. Woman experienced more freedom and we're often unwilling to return to their former roles. Ultimately that post war freedom and the introduction of the pill in the sixties gave birth to contemporary feminism.The returning Black soldiers faced special challenges. The equality they had experienced at war was often rescinded when they returned home. The struggle for a colorblind society is an ongoing challenge.I found the book thought provoking and I appreciate the time and effort poured into it by the author.