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'Drawing on the many scholarly works that discuss the reasons why President Harry S. Truman and his closest advisers considered that the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in August 1945 was a necessary measure, the circumstances that surrounded the Japanese decision to surrender, and the role that possession of the atomic bomb may have played in American diplomacy towards the Soviet Union, Wilson Miscamble has also utilised his own formidable knowledge of the primary sources to produce a wonderfully compressed and trenchantly argued book.' International Affairs Father Miscamble is a history professor at the University of Notre Dame and thus is at home with the theological and moral aspects surrounding the decision to unleash the world's first atomic bombs. He is also familiar with the political and military exigencies of the decision. He takes the reader carefully through the genesis of the bomb-building Manhattan Project, as planned by Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt originally for the bomb's use against Nazi Germany, and through the calculations of the key Allied decision makers, including Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, and Adm. William Leahy, the head of the Joint Chiefs. -Wall Street Journal This book, by the priest and cold war historian Wilson D. Miscamble, is a volume in the Cambridge Essential Histories series, which is (according to its statement of purpose) 'devoted to introducing critical events, periods or individuals in history ... through thesis-driven, concise volumes.' Concise The Most Controversial Decision certainly is: it packs into its 150 pages discussions that other scholars have spent careers grappling with. -Barry Gewen, The New Republic In writing this book, Father Miscamble has done us a great service. -The Rev. Michael P. Orsi, The Washington Times Notre Dame profe ssor Wilson Miscamble has previously written about the blindly unforeseen handoff of the American government from Roosevelt to Truman on April 12, 1945, during the endgame of World War II. He now brings his wise and wide-ranging knowledge of the complicated decisions left for the American president at that time to one specific major decision: whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. -Jay Pasachoff, The Key Reporter Recommended. -Choice

'Drawing on the many scholarly works that discuss the reasons why President Harry S. Truman and his closest advisers considered that the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in August 1945 was a necessary measure, the circumstances that surrounded the Japanese decision to surrender, and the role that possession of the atomic bomb may have played in American diplomacy towards the Soviet Union, Wilson Miscamble has also utilised his own formidable knowledge of the primary sources to produce a wonderfully compressed and trenchantly argued book.' International Affairs

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The Reverend Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., joined the permanent faculty at Notre Dame in 1988. A native of Australia, he was educated at the University of Queensland, from which he graduated in 1973 and obtained a master's degree three years later. In 1976, he came to Notre Dame to pursue graduate studies in history. He received his doctoral degree in 1980. He then served for two years as North American analyst in the Office of National Assessments, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Canberra, Australia. In August 1982, he returned to Notre Dame and entered the priestly formation program of the Congregation of Holy Cross. He was ordained a priest on April 9, 1988. His primary research interest is American foreign policy since World War II. He is the author of George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947–1950 and Keeping the Faith, Making a Difference. He has edited American Political History: Essays on the State of the Discipline and Go Forth and Do Good: Memorable Notre Dame Commencement Addresses. His most recent book, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War, was published in 2007 and received the Harry S. Truman Book Award in 2008.

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