I just finished reading American Caesar[0], a great biography of Douglas MacArthur. I highly recommend it as the story of a fascinating and brilliant man who is

I just finished reading American Caesar[0], a great biography of Douglas MacArthur. I highly recommend it as the story of a fascinating and brilliant man who is too little remembered today. I especially enjoyed and respected MacArthur's place in the rebuilding of Japan; his almost absolute power gave him space to override the more vengeful elements within the United States to implement an extremely conciliatory post-war settlement. I don't think it's unfair to call him the founder of the modern Japanese nation, both in terms of governance and political economy. Though not covered in the book, the distinctions between MacArthur's Japan and Weimar Germany are especially stark, and it is sobering to consider what may have happened had the Japanese fallen into the malaise which in Germany gave rise to the Stabbed In The Back myth[1]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-1880/dp/0316024740 https://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-188... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth