A brisk work of history that weaves together the various factions responsible for the deployment of the first nuclear bombs.
What it took for Harry Truman, after fewer than three months in the White House, to decide to drop the atomic bomb—and how the plan was executed.
The end of World War II in the Pacific was as definitive as the mushroom cloud and firestorm produced by the weapon that brought it about. Fox News Sunday anchor Wallace describes a moment in history when both intense deliberation and decisive leadership were essential. On April 12, 1945, Truman, then the vice president, was summoned to the White House, where he expected to meet President Franklin Roosevelt. Instead, he was received by the president’s wife, Eleanor, who told Truman that Roosevelt had died, only a few months into his fourth term. Truman was shaken by the news, but it was a cryptic message from Secretary of War Henry Stimson that would define the rest of that year—and the war. Stimson informed the new president about Roosevelt’s top-secret project to build a nuclear weapon, and he did not prevaricate in describing the weapon’s potential to the new president: “Modern civilization might be completely destroyed.” Wallace describes how Truman thought that there was every reason to believe that the alternative to using the new weapon—a ground invasion—would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, on both the American/Allied and the Japanese side. The author peppers in the story of Hideko Tamura, a young Japanese girl who was sent away from her home in Hiroshima only to beg her mother to return—just in time to survive the detonation of the first atomic bomb. Wallace presents a mostly entertaining, if familiar, history of the three months between Truman’s taking office and the dropping of the bombs, but he only briefly engages with issues like the suffering of innocent Japanese and the intense misgivings of scientists like Albert Einstein.
A brisk work of history that weaves together the various factions responsible for the deployment of the first nuclear bombs.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982143-34-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A sharply different deconstruction of the prevailing orthodoxy, worthy of attention.
Leverett (International Affairs/Pennsylvania State Univ.; Inheriting Syria: Bashir's Trial by Fire, 2005) and his wife, Hillary, argue that, unless it changes, “the United States’ Iran policy is locked in a trajectory…that will ultimately lead to war.”
The authors take on what they identify as “a powerful mythology” that continues to influence U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic—primarily, the proposition that because it is unpopular, the regime “is in imminent danger of being overthrown.” They offer an alternative to the prevailing view that Khomeini and his supporters hijacked the liberal revolution that began in 1978 and “betrayed the aspirations of those who actually carried out the campaign that deposed the shah.” The Leveretts take issue with American policymakers who propose that the U.S. should advocate the overthrow of the present regime in favor of liberal democracy. They believe in the possibility of negotiating with the present regime. The authors dispute the view that the mullahs have done nothing for the population and lack support, showing how literacy, health and medical care have been upgraded and the economy developed. They highlight present concerns about the Iranian nuclear program, which they claim are exaggerated. They identify the continuing influence of the neoconservatives, who brought about the second Iraq war, and “liberal internationalists,” who are ready to deploy military force in support of human rights. They believe that the time has come for an initiative like Nixon's visit to Beijing to begin a change in course.
A sharply different deconstruction of the prevailing orthodoxy, worthy of attention.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9419-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
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