Hiroshima : the world's bomb

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Title:

Author:

Rotter, Andrew Jon.

ISBN:

9780192804372

Personal Author:

Rotter, Andrew Jon.

Publication Information:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Physical Description:

viii, 371 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm.

Series:

The making of the modern world

Making of the modern world (Oxford University Press)

Contents:

The world's atom -- Great Britain : refugees, air power, and the possibility of the bomb -- Japan and Germany : paths not taken -- The United States I : imagining and building the bomb -- The United States II : using the bomb -- Japan : the atomic bombs and war's end -- The Soviet Union : the bomb and the Cold War -- The world's bomb -- Epilogue : nightmares and hopes.

Subject Term:

Atomic bomb -- History.

Electronic Access:

Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0803/2007045146.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168023603489	940.542521954 R851H 2008	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The US decision to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 remains one of the most controversial events of the twentieth century. However, the controversy over the rights and wrongs of dropping the bomb has tended to obscure a number of fundamental and sobering truths about the development of this fearsome weapon. The principle of killing thousands of enemy civilians from the air was already well established by 1945 and had been practised on numerous occasions by both sides during the Second World War. Moreover, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was conceived and built by an international community of scientists, not just by the Americans. Other nations (including Japan and Germany) were also developing atomic bombs in the first half of the 1940s, albeit hapharzardly. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any combatant nation foregoing the use of the bomb during the war had it been able to obtain one. The international team of scientists organized by the Americans just got there first. As this fascinating new history shows, the bomb dropped by a US pilot that hot August morning in 1945 was in many ways the world's offspring, in both a technological and a moral sense. And it was the world that would have to face its consequences, strategically, diplomatically, and culturally, in the years ahead.