Last night I finished reading the first relatively contemporary history monograph I've read in quite some time. John Dower's War Without Mercy discusses comparatively the anti-Japanese racism in America in the years up to and including WWII, and the anti-(Anglo) American racism of the Japanese in the same period. The dualism here gives this book a gravity that yet another monograph about America's racist past just wouldn't have. The basic argument is that these dual racisms were a key contributing factor (if not the key factor) in the intensity of the brutality of the war in the Pacific. After a while I did find myself skimming some sections, perhaps just falling into old grad school habits. If you're interested in WWII and/or cultural history (especially of race) this is an important book and a worthwhile read. Others might enjoy it too. But I wouldn't recommend it as much as I would Dower's second book, Pulitzer Prize-winner Embracing Defeat, which discusses the post-war U.S. occupation of Japan.

The real story here for me was the reason I read this book, which was that I told other people to read it. In the comments section at Eschaton, I recommended this as a good book on this particular issue because related topics were in the news. Then I stepped back and realized that--outside the context of graduate school, where knowing basically what's in lots of books you haven't actually read is a big part of your job--this was a strange thing to do. So I read it myself. I don't know if I'd do that again, because the result was that I basically learned what I already knew because the Beallsvonian's L.A. legal correspondent had already pretty much told me all about it. As it turns out, and as I already knew, if you know what's in an academic book already, there's not a whole lot of value to reading it. (I'm not suggesting that no one reading this should read the book, because I've only given you a very brief synopsis.) I would not, of course, say the same about quality fiction, where the actual content is presumably not the only attraction.