John W Toland

Vocation

Notable

American writer, a journalist and historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for "The Rising Sun," 1970. John is the son of Ralph Toland, a concert singer, and Helen Snow Toland. He graduated Williams College with a B.A. in 1936 and attended Yale Drama School the following year. He was a member of the USAF for six years, completing his tour as a captain. From an early marriage, he has two daughters; and on 3/12/1960 he married Toshiko Matsumura, one daughter, Tamiko. Writing fiction, juvenile faction and non-fiction, Toland was first published in 1957. His award-winning books include "But Not in Shame," 1967, "The Last 100 Days," 1970 and "Adolf Hitler," 1976. These titles have been best-sellers and helped to establish Toland as "a superb popular historian of World War II." With his multi-faceted viewpoint and interviews with hundreds of participants in historic events, Toland is able to present a remarkably unbiased view of the world events which have shaped history. He adds a new dimension to orthodox military history in going beyond grand strategy to portray the human side of the conflict. Toland wrote that "The summer I was 42, I was the Compleat Failure. After working my way through Exeter, Williams, and the Yale Drama School, I had completed some twenty plays, five novels and about a hundred short stories without a sale. A week later I sold a short story to American Magazine. In the next year I sold a dozen articles on subjects ranging from mental health to diamond smuggling. Then my agent got me a contract to write a book on dirigibles. A score of interviews at Lakeburst, New Jersey, convinced me that the drama and reality of the past could be found more readily by this method than in the New York Public Library, where I had done most of my previous research. "Ships in the Sky," 1957, was a critical success." He followed his teacher’s last words of advice: 'Whatever you write, don't tell it, show it.' The Pulitzer-Prize winning author died of pneumonia in Danbury, CT on January 4, 2004. Link to Wikipedia biography