The crushing psychological pressure these men underwent forms the book’s moral drama. Mr. Thomas is particularly good at limning the uncertainties they faced ... The history of the atomic bomb has been well covered, but Mr. Thomas’s brisk narrative thrusts readers into the moral quandaries that bedeviled policy makers in both Japan and America.
The scenic method and urgent style of Thomas’s writing – the book is mostly in the present tense – embodies his thesis that the surrender "was a close-run thing" that hung on individual actions ... Road to Surrender works best as a persuasive study of a tragic moment: a collision of men and necessities.
Thomas offers sharp insights into Japanese beliefs and customs—especially martial virtues—that allowed the country to go on fighting for so long. He also dispels certain myths, such as the one that the United States wanted to intimidate Russia at the start of the Cold War. A nuanced, absorbing, and perhaps definitive story of the last weeks of World War II.
