Books
Gar Alperowitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1995). Alperowitz examines the unconscionable strategic and political motivations for use of the bomb, including the possibility that it was used as a signal to the Russians.
John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Vintage Books, 1985). Hersey's poignant, extremely distressing account of the experiences of six people who survived the bomb.
Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995). All dressed up and no-one to fear: Klare recounts how we built a new enemy out of straw after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Edward Luttwak, Strategy, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.) How military strategy culminates--and ends-- in the nuclear "balance."
Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, (New York: Grosset-Putnam, 1995). Fifty years of American denial on the subject of Hiroshima.
William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma, (New York: Anchor, 1992). A highly interesting but confusingly structured book which purports to be at once a biography of John von Neumann, game theory originator and rabid proponent of a nuclear preventive strike, and a history of game theory.
Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, (New York: WW Norton, 1995.) I am not sure we needed a debate, so late in the day, as to whether the spread of nuclear weapons is a good thing. Waltz, who takes the pro-nuke position, believes that all human beings, terrorists included, are essentially rational and know better than to set off nuclear weapons.
Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995). This brief, succinct book analyzes U.S. motives for the bomb, concentrating on anti-Japanese racism.
Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Fifty years of American anxiety and boosterism about the atom.
Peter Wyden, Day One, (New York: Warner Books, 1985). A highly readable account of the creation and dropping of the atom bomb.
Herbert F. York, Arms and the Physicist. A collection of essays by a physicist involved with the Manhattan Project and with test ban negotiations later on.
The city of Hiroshima maintains a Web page about the bombing.
Also hosted in Japan is a poignant A-Bomb Museum.
The Seattle Times presents a collection of articles about the Trinity tests and the Hiroshima bombing.
Doug Long, whose article "Was It Necessary?" is reprinted in this issue, maintains an excellent site collecting his essays and other resources.
This site is a collection of documents pertaining to the life of Leo Szilard, atomic scientist who headed a last-ditch effort to persuade President Truman not to use the bomb.
The Hiroshima Archive collects documents and resources on the bombing.