The #1 national bestselling "riveting" (The New York Times),
"propulsive" (Time) behind-the-scenes account "that reads like a tense
thriller" (The Washington Post) of the 116 days leading up to the
American attack on Hiroshima by veteran journalist and anchor of Fox
News Sunday, Chris Wallace.
April 12, 1945: After years of bloody conflict in Europe and the
Pacific, America is stunned by news of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
death. In an instant, Vice President Harry Truman, who has been kept out
of war planning and knows nothing of the top-secret Manhattan Project to
develop the world's first atomic bomb, must assume command of a nation
at war on multiple continents--and confront one of the most
consequential decisions in history. Countdown 1945 tells the gripping
true story of the turbulent days, weeks, and months to follow, leading
up to August 6, 1945, when Truman gives the order to drop the bomb on
Hiroshima.
In Countdown 1945, Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of
Fox News Sunday, takes readers inside the minds of the iconic and
elusive figures who join the quest for the bomb, each for different
reasons: the legendary Albert Einstein, who eventually calls his vocal
support for the atomic bomb "the one great mistake in my life"; lead
researcher J. Robert "Oppie" Oppenheimer and the Soviet spies who
secretly infiltrate his team; the fiercely competitive pilots of the
plane selected to drop the bomb; and many more.
Perhaps most of all, Countdown 1945 is the story of an untested new
president confronting a decision that he knows will change the world
forever. But more than a book about the atomic bomb, Countdown 1945 is
also an unforgettable account of the lives of ordinary American and
Japanese civilians in wartime--from "Calutron Girls" like Ruth Sisson in
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to ten-year-old Hiroshima resident Hideko Tamura,
who survives the blast at ground zero but loses her mother and later
immigrates to the United States, where she lives to this day--as well as
American soldiers fighting in the Pacific, waiting in fear for the order
to launch a possible invasion of Japan. Told with vigor, intelligence,
and humanity, Countdown 1945 is the definitive account of one of the
most significant moments in history.
