Prompt and Utter Destruction: President Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan
£9.74
Walker, in the book, includes what the reviewers here do not - Walker, in this wonderful book, makes clear that the consensus of scholarly study is that the bomb was known to Truman, and to decision-makers, AT THE TIME, to be UNCECSSARY.The book then goes on to, as other reviewers have made clear, roll out the totality of reasoning behind the eventual - and only - employment of high-casuality atomic weapons in history.But to leave out the fact that Walker, a conservative, official government historian, leaves out the possibility that the Truman decision-makers did NOT know that the bomb wasn t needed is to continue to construct what s commonly called Hiroshima myth.
A great historical overview on the end of World War II - This book was an excellent historical account of the events leading up to the use of the atomic bombs. I now realize that there were a multitude of reasons for and against their use, and a lot of gray in between. The reader is presented the information and forced to make their own opinion on this very controversial event.
A very good book - I was confronted in a class with the claim that we dropped the bomb for the purpose of intimidating Russia. Not so, I exclaimed, we did it to prevent massive casualties from a land invasion of Japan! Well, this book was a real eye-opener. The book showed that neither viewpoint was accurate, but I came away yet confident that the terrible decision had not been irresponsibly nor immorally made.