Craig Nelson
Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness
Nelson is the author of Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness on the WWII attack on Pearl Harbor and how it changed America.
From the publisher:
“A valuable reexamination” (Booklist, starred review) of the event that changed twentieth-century America—Pearl Harbor—based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times bestselling author.
”The America we live in today was born, not on July 4, 1776, but on December 7, 1941, when an armada of 354 Japanese warplanes supported by aircraft carriers, destroyers, and midget submarines suddenly and savagely attacked the United States, killing 2,403 men—and forced America’s entry into World War II. Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness follows the sailors, soldiers, pilots, diplomats, admirals, generals, emperor, and president as they engineer, fight, and react to this stunningly dramatic moment in world history.
”Beginning in 1914, bestselling author Craig Nelson maps the road to war, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, attended the laying of the keel of the USS Arizona at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Writing with vivid intimacy, Nelson traces Japan’s leaders as they lurch into ultranationalist fascism, which culminates in their scheme to terrify America with one of the boldest attacks ever waged. Within seconds, the country would never be the same.
”Backed by a research team’s five years of work, as well as Nelson’s thorough re-examination of the original evidence assembled by federal investigators, this page-turning and definitive work “weaves archival research, interviews, and personal experiences from both sides into a blow-by-blow narrative of destruction liberally sprinkled with individual heroism, bizarre escapes, and equally bizarre tragedies” (Kirkus Reviews). Nelson delivers all the terror, chaos, violence, tragedy, and heroism of the attack in stunning detail, and offers surprising conclusions about the tragedy’s unforeseen and resonant consequences that linger even today.”
[Recorded on December 3, 2020 and rebroadcast on December 7, 2020]
Craig Nelson (craignelson.us) is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Rocket Men, as well as several previous books, including The Age of Radiance (a finalist for the PEN Award), The First Heroes, Thomas Paine (winner of the Henry Adams Prize), and Let’s Get Lost (short-listed for W.H. Smith’s Book of the Year).
As a historian he is known for epic moments in the American experience — Pearl Harbor; the race to the Moon; the nation’s founding; and the nuclear era — that are both engrossingly page-turning and distinguished for their scholarship. Massively researched from scratch, his books are eye-opening and definitive accounts of the profound moments that made us who we are today.
