Jonathan Clements is the author of many books including A Brief History of Japan; Christ's Samurai: The True Story of the Shimabara Rebellion; A Brief History of the Samurai; Modern Japan: All That Matters and biographies of Admiral Togo and Prince Saionji Kinmochi. In 2016 he became the presenter of Route Awakening (National Geographic Channel), a TV series on the historical icons of Chinese culture.
In 1853, a fleet of US warships arrived at Japan, and through the threat of violence, ended Japan's 250 years of self-isolation from the world. The destabilization caused by this event led to a government that looked to the Western powers as their example, and they started down the road to creating an empire. Jonathan Clements's new book outlines how a nation that had no living memory of war transformed itself into a militarized, expansionist power that dragged the entirety of Asia and the Pacific into war. --Powell's Books Blog