SIDEBAR:THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB

Additional reading The decision-making process that led to the use of the atomic bomb is discussed in Leon V. Sigal, Fighting to a Finish (1988). A classic study is Robert J.C. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender (1954, reissued 1967). An excellent narrative history is Stanley Weintraub, The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945 (1995). The revisionist critique of the decision to use the bomb is argued in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (1995); and Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, 3rd ed. (2000). A balanced analysis is provided by J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction (1997).