Pacific History Guide Reading List

History

Asia

Origins of WW2

The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949

S.C.M. Paine

2012

History

Aviation

U.S. Navy / U.S. Marine Corps

US Navy Aircraft 1921-1941 / US Marine Corps Aircraft 1914-1959

William T. Larkins

1988

History

Britain/UK

British Empire

The British Empire’s Image of East Asia, 1900–41 chapter of Shaping British Foreign and Defence Policy in the Twentieth Century

Malcolm H. Murfett

2014

History

Britain/UK

Maritime History

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Dava Sobel

2011

History

Britain/UK

Naval History

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Caroline Alexander

2003

History

Britain/UK

Royal Navy

Ships of the Royal Navy

J.J. Colledge

2010

History

Britain/UK

Royal Navy

Endeavour: The Ship that Changed the World

Peter Moore

2018

History

China

The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History

David J. Silbey

2012

History

First World War

End of WWI

A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East

David Fromkin

1989

History

First World War

Japan

War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914–1919

Frederick R. Dickinson

1999

History

First World War

Japan

World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919-1930

Frederick R. Dickinson

2013

History

First World War

Navy

Battleships of World War I

Antony Preston

1973

History

First World War

Origins of WWI

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Christopher Clark

2012

History

First World War

Origins of WWI

Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I

Michael Neiberg

2011

History

First World War

Origins of WWI

George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

Miranda Carter

2010

History

First World War

Ottoman Empire

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

Eugene Rogan

2015

History

First World War

Paris Peace Conference

Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World

Margaret MacMillan

2001

History

First World War

Worldwide history of WWI

The First World War

Hew Strachan

2005

History

Hawai'i

The Real Hawaii: Its History and Present Condition, Including the True Story of the Revolution

Lucien Young

1899

History

Hong Kong

Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

Louisa Lim

2022

History

Japan

Autobiography

The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa

Yukuchi Fukuzawa

1899

History

Japan

Biography

Ten years in Japan

Joseph Grew

1944

History

Japan

Britain/UK

Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires 1894-1907

Ian Nish

1966

History

Japan

Cultural Anthropology

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

Ruth Benedict

1967

History

Japan

Edo Period

Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard

Anonoymous Edo Samurai, edited and translated by Mark Teeuwen, Kate Wildman Nakai, Fumiko Miyazaki

1816

History

Japan

Edo Period

In the Service of the Shogun?: The Real Story of William Adams

Frederik Cryns

2024

History

Japan

Emperor Hirohito

Hirohito and His Times: A Japanese Perspective

Toshiaki Kawahara

1990

History

Japan

Emperor Hirohito

Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Herbert Bix

2000

History

Japan

End of WWII

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

John Dower

2000

History

Japan

Imperial Japan

War and Armament Expenditures of Japan (Reference)

Giichi Ono

1922

History

Japan

Imperial Japan

The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War

S.C.M. Paine

2017

History

Japan

Imperial Japan

Nan'yo: Imperial Japan in Micronesia 1885-1945

Mark R. Peattie

1992

History

Japan

Imperial Japan

Population pressure and economic life in Japan

R. Ishii

1937

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

Imperial Japanese Navy (Reference)

Fred T. Jane

1904

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy 1887-1941

David C. Evans, Mark R. Peattie

2012

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War

Mark Stille

2014

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

The Japanese Naval Warship Photo Albums: Official photos of the Kure Maritime Museum in six volumes

Kazushige Todaka, Translated by Robert D. Eldridge

2005

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

Battleship Musashi: The Making and Sinking of the Worlds Biggest Battleship

Akira Yoshimura

1999

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

Japanese Combined Fleet 1942-43: Guadalcanal to the Solomons Campaign

Mark Stille

2024

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States

Sadao Asada

2006

History

Japan

Imperial Japanese Navy

Requiem for Battleship Yamato (Translated by Richard H. Minear)

Yoshida Mitsuru

1999

History

Japan

International Affairs

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922

Phillips O'Brien

2009

History

Japan

Manga

Showa: A History of Japan (in four volumes)

Shigeru Mizuki translated by Zack Davisson

1989

History

Japan

Meiji Japan

The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi

Fukuzawa Yukichi

1897

History

Japan

Meiji Restoration

Choshu in the Meiji Restoration

Albert M. Craig

2000

History

Japan

Meiji Restoration

To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History

Mark J. Ravina

2017

History

Japan

Militarism

Japan at War 1914-1952

Jeremy Yellen

2024

History

Japan

Post-War Japan

Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World

John Dower

2012

History

Japan

Sengoku Period

War in Japan 1467-1615

Stephen Turnbull

2002

History

Japan

Tokugawa Shogunate

Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu

A.L. Sadler

1937

History

Japan, China

First Sino-Japanese War

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy

S.C.M. Paine

2005

History

Japan, Russia

Russo-Japanese War

Rising Sun And Tumbling Bear: Russia's War with Japan

Richard Connaughton

2007

History

Naval History

Maritime History

Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night, 1904-1944

Vincent P. Ohara and Trent Hone

2023

History

Second World War

The Second World War (series)

Winston Churchill

1953

History

Second World War

American Analysis

Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan

Ronald H. Spector

1985

History

Second World War

American Analysis

The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima

Daniel Marston

2005

History

Second World War

Anthology

The Pacific Rivals: A Japanese View of Japanese-American Relations

Asahi Shinbun

1972

History

Second World War

Atomic Bombings

Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath

Paul Ham

2014

History

Second World War

Autobiography

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

William Manchester

2002

History

Second World War

Autobiography

Fading victory : the diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941-1945

Admiral Matome Ugaki

1991

History

Second World War

Aviation Maintenance and Supply

Sustaining the Carrier War: The Deployment of U.S. Naval Air Power to the Pacific

Stan Fisher

2023

History

Second World War

Battle of Leyte Gulf

Leyte Gulf: A New History of the World's Largest Sea Battle

Mark Stille

2025

History

Second World War

Battle of Leyte Gulf

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

James D. Hornfischer

2005

History

Second World War

Battle of Leyte Gulf

The Battle for Leyte Gulf: The Incredible Story of World War II's Largest Naval Battle

C. Vann Woodward

2017

History

Second World War

Biography

The Mussolini Memoirs 1942-1943

Benito Mussolini

1944

History

Second World War

Biography

The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943: The Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1936-1943

Galeazzo Ciano

1990

History

Second World War

Central Pacific Campaign

The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific 1944-45

James D. Hornfischer

2016

History

Second World War

Emperor Hirohito

Hirohito: Behind the Myth

Edward Behr

1990

History

Second World War

Europe

Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis

Robert M. Edsel

2013

History

Second World War

Europe

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

Robert M. Edsel

2010

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

Triumph and Tragedy

Winston S. Churchill

1953

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

The Grand Alliance

Winston S. Churchill

1948

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

The Gathering Storm

Winston S. Churchill

1948

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

Closing the Ring

Winston S. Churchill

1951

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

The Hinge of Fate

Winston S. Churchill

1950

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

Their Finest Hour

Winston S. Churchill

1962

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

First into Nagasaki: The CENSORED Eyewitness Dispatches On Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War

Anthony and George Weller

2007

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

Interrogations of Japanese Officers Vols I & II

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific) Naval Analisys Division

1946

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Account

History of United States Naval Operations in World War II

Samuel Eliot Morison

1962

History

Second World War

Eyewitness Accounts

Japan at War: an Oral History

Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook

1992

History

Second World War

Guadalcanal Campaign

Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

James D. Hornfischer

2011

History

Second World War

Guam

The Recapture of Guam

Maj. O.R. Lodge USMC

1954

History

Second World War

Hell Ships

Death on the Hell Ships: Prisoners at Sea in the Pacific War

Gregory F. Michno

2001

History

Second World War

Imperial Japan

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

Richard B. Frank

1999

History

Second World War

Imperial Japanese Army

In the service of the Emperor : essays on the Imperial Japanese Army

Edward Drea

1998

History

Second World War

Imperial Japanese Navy

A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945

Paul S. Dull

1978

History

Second World War

Imperial Japanese Navy

The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy: A Japanese Account of the Rise and Fall of Japan's Seapower, with Emphasis on World War II

Masanori Ito

1962

History

Second World War

Imperial Japanese Navy

I-Boat Captain: How Japan's Submarines Almost Defeated the U.S. Navy in the Pacific!

Zenji Orata

1976

History

Second World War

Imperial Japanese Navy

Japanese Destroyer Captain: Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway - The Great Naval Battles as Seen Through Japanese Eyes

Tameichi Hara translated by Fred Saito

1961

History

Second World War

Japan

Memoir by Prince Konoe: The Secret Negotiations Between Japan and the U.S. Before Pearl Harbor

Konoe Fumimaro; translated and edited by Jenny Chan and Barbara Halperin

1945

History

Second World War

Japan

Japan's Pacific War: Personal Accounts of the Emperor's Warriors

Peter Williams

2021

History

Second World War

Japanese Analysis

Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

Eri Hotta

2013

History

Second World War

Japanese Analysis

The Pacific War: World War II and the Japanese, 1931-1945

Saburo Ienaga

1979

History

Second World War

Japanese Analysis

Shōwa Tennō no Jū-go Nen Sensō (Shōwa Emperor's Fifteen-year War)

Akira Fujiawara

1991

History

Second World War

Japanese Analysis

The Pacific War 1931-1945 (English Translation)

Saburo Ienaga

1978

History

Second World War

Japanese Analysis

The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy

Masanori Ito

1956

History

Second World War

Japanese Occupation of Guam

The Massacre at Atate

Jose M. Torres

2015

History

Second World War

Japanese Perspective

Journey to the Missouri

Toshikazu Kase

1950

History

Second World War

Manga

Japan's Longest Day

Kazutoshi Hando

1968

History

Second World War

Military Strategy

The Military Strategy of the Emperor Hirohito

Akira Yamada

2002