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Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War

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This book is a quick and interesting read. The central question explored is: From their onset, were atomic bombs viewed a qualitatively distinct "special" from other weapons coming out of the Second World War, or was this attitude subsequently, though quickly, developed? The author suggests by thorough analysis the latter. He reasons that this was driven by the public's fear of these weapons once they learned of them, and also by the political usefulness of the idea in the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union.

His subtle but persistent probing on this and related questions suggests how issues of current interest may be handled by political, scientific and public groups. For example, do weapons of mass destruction actually intensify conventional war because at least they are not nuclear? And, how are technological revolutions and/or threats managed, particularly under urgent conditions?

With 144 pages of probing and logically tight writing and an additional 48 pages of references, it is feels a scholarly publication intended to generate serious discussion.

This books explains how the atomic bomb acquired its mythical status in a few days in August 1945. This status was not justified by the destructive power of the then-produced bombs. Rather, it came from visions of apocalypse which would only become realistic many years later, reinforced by American propaganda and above all the reaction of the Japanese government, which needed a good excuse for surrendering. The author's main thesis is that it is the Japanese surrender which made the atomic bomb special, rather than the special power of the bomb making Japan surrender.

The book is however rather brief and the argument feels somewhat incomplete although not in my opinion biased as the author does not ignore the facts which do not go his way. It is anyway very healthy to critically think on the atomic bomb's mythology, which has itself been playing an important role in history. For instance, the author argues that it is more this mythology than the actual strength of America's atomic arsenal which helped prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe in the late 1940s. Moreover, this book brings a welcome focus on the issue of effectively using the bomb, which is of course as important as being able to procuce it. And it is interesting to see how irrelevant such later questions as the necessity of the dropping of a second atomic bomb and the dangers from radiations were to the men of August 1945.

I don't know what is in this book, I haven't gotten past the cover.

While the Bell VB-13 (later ASM-A-1) Tarzon bomb looks impressive, it never was a nuclear weapon nor was it intended to be one.

If the publishers didn't attend to this most obvious of the book's details, how did they address its lesser known points, which after all, are why readers would buy this book?