Even if the author's conclusions are valid (which as often as not, they are not), so what? Why do so many people insist on refracting everything through a prism of their own making? John Dower may be a pretty smart guy, but he has no credential for purporting to know more about the history of the Pacific war than the people who actually created that history. Their chronicles are ubiquitous, exhaustive, and remarkably consistent, and thoroughly at odds with most of Dower's contrived conclusions.Ride the zeitgeist ere it tramples you.