Embrace the heft of this book. It is a rich history of wars and politics in Asia leading up WW II — the invasion of Manchuria; rape at Nanjing; colonialism — and a highly-readable, comprehensive account of the trial of Japanese leaders who waged the war. Far less known than ‘Judgment at Nuremberg,’ the proceeding at Tokyo had considerable consequences. ‘The trial reveals why a liberal international order has not emerged in Asia,” Bass writes; but it also laid much of the foundation for the stable, prosperous democracy that Japan has become.

With a MacArthur-imposed free press that they hadn’t known, the Japanese learned about atrocities and mass killing by Japanese soldiers, and they received a lesson in criminal justice when they read about American military lawyers vigorously defending Japanese defendants who had bombed Pearl Harbor. The chief judge of the tribunal was a Queenslander, William Webb, hot-tempered, disdained by fellow judges, but who managed to cable together a majority to convict, over a 1,000-page dissent from the Indian judge.  The issues raised at Tokyo — what is a war crime; and is waging war a crime — have relevance today. Will there be a Judgment at Moscow? Gaza? Jerusalem?

—Ray