The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiv, 847, [1] pages. Footnotes. Appendix. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Inscribed by author on fep. The author was assisted by Sanho Tree, Edward Rouse Winstead, Kathryn C. Morris, David J. Williams, Leo C. Maley III, Thad Williamson, and Miranda Grieder. Gar Alperovitz (born May 5, 1936) is an American political economist and historian. He was the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, College Park Department of Government and Politics from 1999 to 2015. Alperovitz was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding Fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics; a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. He also served as a Legislative Director in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate and as a Special Assistant in the US Department of State. Alperovitz is a member of the board of directors for the New Economics Institute and a founding principal of the Democracy Collaborative. Controversial in nature, this book demonstrates that the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Alperovitz criticizes one of the most hotly debated precursory events to the Cold War, an event that was largely responsible for the evolution of post-World War II American politics and culture. The author wrote: I am most well known for my work on the history of the decision to use the atomic bomb. In my 1965 book, Atomic diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, I argued that the then available evidence available pointed to three major conclusions: first, that the first use of these terrible weapons was unnecessary; second, that this was understood by decision makers at the time; and third that there was very substantial though not absolutely definitive evidence that by the summer of 1945 the decision was primarily influenced by diplomatic considerations related to the Soviet Union. I revisited this thesis in my 1995 book, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. The 1995 book focused directly and explicitly on the decision itself. The new book also reviewed the many ways in which myths concerning its use were actively promoted by official and unofficial efforts in the early Cold War years.