Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb against Japan

Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb against Japan. By Sean L. Malloy. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. xiv, 233 pp. $26.95, ISBN 978-0-8014-4654-2.)

Henry L. Stimson ranks as one of the most important U.S. policy makers of the first half of the twentieth century. His public career in government spanned four decades and included bipartisan service under six presidents. Yet his life and work have received surprisingly little attention from scholars. Sean L. Malloy 's richly detailed, well-argued monograph is the latest addition to the growing literature on Stimson that offers a critical analysis of his role in what is arguably the most momentous U.S. defense and foreign policy decision of the modern era - to use nuclear weapons...