First published 2026
In August 1945, America crossed a moral line it had never crossed before. Over three days, the United States killed 120,000 Japanese civilians and condemned tens of thousands more to slow death from radiation. James M. Scott reconstructs the final months of the Pacific War through voices rarely heard before. He draws on survivor interviews and Japanese sources to reveal how a nation that once condemned civilian bombing came to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scott traces the story from the Manhattan Project laboratories at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford to the decades of suffering that followed in Japan. The book examines the moral choice at the heart of America's turn to total war against Japan and the consequences that rippled through both nations.
Genres: biography, history, 20th-century, world-war-ii, military-history, american-history
Vibes: haunting, meticulously-researched, morally-complex, sobering, thought-provoking
Tropes: consequence-exploration, historical-reconstruction, multiple-perspectives
Setting: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, Japan, United States, Pacific
Period: August 1945, World War II, 1945, 20th century
528 pages · Hardcover · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, war