John Toland (historian) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Willard Toland
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Toland in 1971
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| Born | June 29, 1912 La Crosse, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | January 4, 2004 (aged 91) Danbury, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | Williams College Yale University |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction |
John Willard Toland (born June 29, 1912 – died January 4, 2004) was an American writer and historian. He is well-known for his biography of Adolf Hitler. He also wrote The Rising Sun, a book about Japan during World War II, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
Contents
About John Toland
Early Life and Writing Journey
John Toland was born in 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He went to Phillips Exeter Academy and then to Williams College. For a while, he also studied at the Yale School of Drama. His first dream was to become a playwright, someone who writes plays.
During his college summers, he traveled with people who moved around looking for work. He wrote several plays about them, but none were ever performed. He later said that in his early writing years, he felt like a big failure.
He wrote many novels, plays, and short stories before selling his first story in 1954. He earned $165 for it from The American Magazine. Later, he wrote an article about large airships for LOOK magazine. This article became very popular and helped him start his career as a historian. His first published book, Ships in the Sky (1957), was also about airships.
His Most Famous Book: The Rising Sun
One of John Toland's most important books is The Rising Sun. It was published in 1970 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1971. The Pulitzer Prize is a very important award for writers and journalists in the United States.
To write this book, Toland interviewed many high-ranking Japanese officials who lived through World War II. The book tells the story of the Empire of Japan from a military event in 1936 until the end of World War II. It won the Pulitzer Prize because it was the first book in English to tell the history of the Pacific War from Japan's point of view. Most books before it had only shown the American side of the story.
Other Works
Historical Novels
Even though John Toland mostly wrote non-fiction, he also published two historical novels. These were called Gods of War and Occupation. He once shared that he didn't earn much money from his prize-winning book, The Rising Sun. However, his book Adolf Hitler made him enough money to be set for life. He also did a lot of original research for that book.
A List of His Books
Here are some of the books John Toland wrote:
Non-Fiction
- Ships in the Sky: The Story of the Great Dirigibles (1957)
- Battle: The Story of the Bulge (1959)
- But Not in Shame: The Six Months After Pearl Harbor (1962)
- The Dillinger Days (1963)
- The Flying Tigers (1963)
- The Last 100 Days: The Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe (1966)
- The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (1970)
- The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs & Disasters (1972)
- Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1976)
- No Man's Land: 1918, The Last Year of the Great War (1980)
- Infamy: Pearl Harbor And Its Aftermath (1982)
- In Mortal Combat: Korea 1950–1953 (1991)
- Captured by History: One Man's Vision of Our Tumultuous Century (1997)
Novels
- Gods of War (1985)
- Occupation (1987)
Later Life and Passing
John Toland passed away on January 4, 2004. He died from pneumonia at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Connecticut.
More to Explore
Articles by John Toland
- 'Death of a Dirigible', February 1959, American Heritage, Volume X Number 2, pp 18–23
Related Topics
- List of books by or about Adolf Hitler
