Review: The Bomb, “Prompt and Utter Destruction”
| Author | Mark Atwood Lawrence |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200606100316 |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Summer 2006 | 759 |
| Reviews |
organizations by confident, empowered subordinates. Wisely, the author
does not attempt the obvious and burning question that arises from his
analysis: how do you find and develop a Nelson and bands of sisters and
brothers?
This is a delightful book, fast-paced and clearly written. The author’s
decades of experience in the field, as a university teacher and, previously,
historical researcher with the US navy, shows to very good effect. He has
peppered the text with pithy and witty quotations from a vast array of the
most prominent naval historians of the past 120 years, from Mahan and
Corbett, to Richmond and Tunstall, to Polmar and Friedman.
Roger Sarty/Wilfrid Laurier University
THE BOMB
A Life
Gerard J. DeGroot
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. xvi, 397pp, US$27.95
cloth (ISBN 0-674-01724-2)
“PROMPT AND UTTER DESTRUCTION”
Truman and the Use of the Atomic Bombs Against Japan, rev. ed.
J. Samuel Walker
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 160pp
US$16.95 paper (ISBN 0-8078-5607-X)
The history of nuclear weapons has attracted more than its share of fine
scholars and, perhaps more remarkably, fine writers who have managed to
make a challenging subject accessible to broad audiences. In masterful
books over the past 25 years, Richard Rhodes, Gregg Herken, and Fred
Kaplan, to name just three, brought to life arcane matters of science and
strategy, helping to educate a generation of students and general readers on
matters of epic importance.
With their superb new books, Gerard J. DeGroot and J. Samuel Walker
extend this admirable tradition. Specialists will find little fresh evidence or
argumentation in DeGroot’s
The Bomb: A Life
or the revised edition of
Walker’s
“Prompt and Utter Destruction.”
Rather, the authors’ achievement
lies in their ability to synthesize vast bodies of scholarship and to offer ele-
gant, concise, and up-to-date distillations suitable for general readers and,
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