#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "Riveting." --The New York
Times * "Propulsive." --Time **** * "Reads
like a tense thriller." --The **** Washington Post
* "The book is deservedly the nonfiction
blockbuster of the season." --The Wall Street
Journal
From Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of Fox News
Sunday, comes an electrifying behind-the-scenes account of the 116 days
leading up to the American attack on Hiroshima.
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. Truman's journey during these 116 days is a story of high
drama: from the shock of learning of the bomb's existence, to the
conflicting advice he receives from generals like Dwight D. Eisenhower
and George Marshall, to wrestling with the devastating carnage that will
result if he gives the order to use America's first weapon of mass
destruction.
But Countdown 1945 is more than a book about the atomic bomb. It's
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.
