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A riveting immersive account of the agonizing decision to use nuclear weapons against Japana crucial turning point in World War II and geopolitical historywith youarethere immediacy by the New York Times bestselling author of Ikes Bluff and Sea of Thunder

As Christopher Nolans movie Oppenheimer shows the shockwaves reverberate still The veteran biographer Evan Thomas now enters the debateThe Wall Street Journal

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

At 920 am on the morning of May 30 General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war at once Stimson is waiting for him He wants to know has Groves selected the targets yet

So begins this suspenseful impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with Americas decision to drop the atomic bomband Japans decision to surrender They are Henry Stimson the American Secretary of War whooversaw J Robert Oppenheimer under the Manhattan Project Gen Carl Tooey Spaatz head of strategic bombing in the Pacific who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo the only one in Emperor Hirohitos Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender

Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents but asOppenheimers workprogressed he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb The new president Harry S Truman thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision accepted Stimsons recommendation to drop the bomb Army Air Force Commander Gen Spaatz ordered the planes to take off Like Stimson Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war After the bombs were dropped Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender

To bring these critical events to vivid life bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson Togo and Spaatz contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision In Road to Surrender an immersive surprising moving account Thomas lays out the behindthescenes thoughts feelings motivations and decisionmaking of three people who changed history