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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.
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\nApril 12, 1945: After years of bloody conflict in Europe and the Pacific, America is stunned by news of President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s 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\u2019s first atomic bomb, must assume command of a nation at war on multiple continents\u2014and 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.
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\nIn 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 \u201cthe one great mistake in my life\u201d; lead researcher J. Robert \u201cOppie\u201d 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.
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\nPerhaps 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\u2019s journey during these 116 days is a story of high drama: from the shock of learning of the bomb\u2019s 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\u2019s first weapon of mass destruction.
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\nBut Countdown 1945 is more than a book about the atomic bomb. It\u2019s also an unforgettable account of the lives of ordinary American and Japanese civilians in wartime\u2014from \u201cCalutron Girls\u201d 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\u2014as well as American soldiers fighting in the Pacific, waiting in fear for the order to launch a possible invasion of Japan.
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\nTold with vigor, intelligence, and humanity, Countdown 1945 is the definitive account of one of the most significant moments in history.