Hiroshima Nagasaki

Award-winning author Paul Ham relates the gripping human story behind the the building and detonating in war of the world's first atomic bombs.

Did the atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki end the war in the Pacific and save millions of American and Japanese lives? Most people believe so. They certainly killed a civilian population of more than 100,000, and caused many hundreds of thousands to succumb to injuries later or slowly perish from radiation-related sickness.

American leaders claimed the bombings were 'our least abhorrent choice', but historian Paul Ham challenges this view. He argues that the bombings, when Japan was on its knees, were the culmination of an Allied war on enemy civilians already well underway. Throw in a seemingly unstoppable momentum to try out the new demonic weapon developed by the secret Manhattan Project and a suspicious Soviet Union racing for spoils of war from a front it had not been part of, and the raining down of horror on an unsuspecting population on two clear summer days seems tragically inevitable.

PRAISE

'In Hiroshima Nagasaki, Ham tells a story of hatred and heroism, ingenuity and mindless viciousness, ambition and despair' Sydney Morning Herald
'... there is much to admire in this book, which punctures some of the myths that have been associated with the A-bomb. Most importantly, it reminds us of the vast destructive power that still lies at our fingertips - and at those of our rivals' UK Mail Online
'Ham is a splendid storyteller, a master of engrossing and exciting narrative ... [he] digs deeper, and brings back to life the figures who dominated this history, in a page-turner that could reach a wide audience' LA Review of Books