Download or read book Lever of Empire written by Mark Metzler and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-03-13 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lever of Empire is an engrossing page turner—I simply could not put it down until I had finished it. This is an important subject, and one that has not been given adequate attention in Western scholarship on Japan until now. Metzler has done thorough research, and has woven these materials together into an elegantly written whole. The result is an outstanding book."—Richard J. Smethurst, author of A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism: The Army and the Rural Community