An arguable but handy reference for students of world history and the war in the Pacific.
A document-grounded argument that Harry Truman made the right decision by dropping the atomic bomb.
Military historian Giangreco rejects the claim, by “revisionist historians,” that “none of the options explored by President Truman and his contemporaries—atom bomb, invasion, or both—was warranted.” The underlying premise of that idea was that Japan was preparing to surrender, which Giangreco further rejects. He argues that Japan was prepared to resist to the last with a still-powerful army, as well as that American losses in the event of an invasion could exceed the estimate of 1,000,000 that has often been cited. The planks of Giangreco’s case are repetitive but painstakingly laid out, and the author pursues several topics around which historical and popular controversy have formed. One, following Truman’s own memoirs, concerns his supposed ignorance of the Manhattan Project and its implications. Although he needed to be brought up to speed, a memorandum from Secretary of War Henry Stimson indicates that he was fully briefed on the matters. A second topic is the involvement of the Soviet Union, which declared war on Japan late in 1945—and which, thanks to a little-reported lend-lease program, was preparing to use American amphibious craft to invade northern Japan “before their embattled comrades in the Maritime Provinces and the port of Vladivostok finally ran out of bullets, borscht, and men.” The most important documents involve those casualty figures, and by Giangreco’s account, they support his often stated contention that the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima saved millions of lives—not just Americans, who were suffering losses in conventional warfare of some 65,000 “killed, wounded, and missing each and every month during the ‘casualty surge’ of June 1944 to June 1945,” but also as many as 20 million Japanese.
An arguable but handy reference for students of world history and the war in the Pacific.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781640120730
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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