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Title: Too dry for my taste
Review: As a casual history reader, I found this book way too dry. Although it delivers on its premise, namely sketching out a history of Japan, it was a relief to finally put the book down after having read it.This book I bought for the dual purpose of being entertained and learn something in the process, but it could only fulfill the latter requirement. It may be unfair to ask of a book to be engaging and still tell a whole country's history in under 300 pages, so I'm probably unfair - the book just reads too much like a textbook, and that wasn't really what I had hoped for.Not knowing too much about Japanese history from other sources, I can't comment on the accuracy of the text, but there's an annoyingly high frequency of simple spelling errors, etc.Lastly, there's only one map of Japan in the Southeast Asian setting, and it's buried deep inside of the book. I really missed a map of Japan in the book!
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