The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb - Softcover

Alperovitz, Gar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067976285X ISBN 13: 9780679762850

Publisher: Vintage, 1996

Synopsis

Controversial in nature, this book demonstrates that the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Alperovitz criticizes one of the most hotly debated precursory events to the Cold War, an event that was largely responsible for the evolution of post-World War II American politics and culture.

About this title

Review:

"A massively detailed yet fascinating and readable work of scholarship."--San Francisco Chronicle

From the Back Cover:

THE ATOMIC BOMB WAS DROPPED BY THE AMERICANS PRIMARILY TO SCARE THE SOVIET UNION, AND NOT TO SAVE LIVES OR BRING WAR TO AN END – THAT IS THE SHOCKING TRUTH AT THE HEART OF THIS CONCLUSIVE HISTORY.

On 6 and 9 August 1945 the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by atomic bombs, dropped, we have long been told, to save a million soldiers’ lives, to tame unyielding Japan and to bring the second World War to its close. There was no alternative. That, as Dr Alperovitz carefully and irrefutably shows in this damning book, was simply a lie; that lie hardened into received wisdom, and the world has been systematically deceived for fifty years. All the while, the real reasons for the dropping of the atomic bomb lay elsewhere: they are set out before here in painstaking detail – the proofs, and the truth, are staggering.

“A comprehensive and definitive history”
NEWSDAY

“Ambitious and far-reaching: Alperovitz has lost none of his instinct for provocative judgements about one of the century’s paramount historical controversies. He has written what will almost certainly serve as a bible for the next generation of revisionist scholars, a book that is elegantly documented and intensely argued.”
MICHAEL R. BESCHLOSS, 'New York Times'

“Alperovitz has forced us to consider uncomfortable hypotheses, often with considerable supporting evidence.”
PROFESSOR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN, 'Sunday Times'

“Opinions, like talk, are cheap. The only way to come to a well-founded view on this momentous, 50-year-old argument is to study the documentary record that has gradually come to light, most plausibly now by reading Gar Alperovitz’s valuable new book on the subject. This famous revisionist, although still spurned by dominant US opinion, has provided the intellectually respectable interpretation of how and why the US became the only nation to use nuclear weapons. He has stayed with his subject and has prevailed in his pursuit of the truth. For this he deserves congratulations, indeed, honour.”
RONNIE DUGGER, 'Boston Globe'

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 067976285X
• ISBN 13: 9780679762850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 864