Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II

"This is an enthralling account of the events leading up to the Japanese surrender in World War II. Evan Thomas has gotten access to the diaries of leading players on the American and Japanese sides of the drama. What he has produced is a riveting account of the decision to drop two atomic bombs, but even more importantly, he has shed new light on the cataclysmic power struggle behind the scenes in Japan and how the powerful military fought the idea of surrender quite literally to its death. This is a book perfectly paired with American Prometheus (which was the source material for the film Oppenheimer) and is remarkable for the way it counters modern conventional wisdom about the atomic end of the war."