On one hand, the book reads like a riveting novel as Wallace reveals the machinations and internal debates among the scientific community to devise a workable atomic bomb as quickly as possible...But Countdown 1945 is also a profound story of decision making at the highest levels — and of pathos ... filled with fascinating details ... superb, masterly.
You’ve heard about it in school, movies and novels, but the true story, told in Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss’ Countdown 1945, is more exciting than those tomes you cracked open in American history class ... Veteran journalist Chris Wallace provides us with a historical account of that world-shattering final decision, which reads like a thriller from page one. Hollywood couldn’t conceive of a plot any more taut than the real events behind the grueling decision to unleash a lethal weapon that would forever change warfare and planet Earth ... This page-turning account delves into the private lives of the actual men and women who created the atom bomb, tested it and armed it to finally detonate not once but twice over two major Japanese cities ... Had Countdown 1945 hit the market in less unsettling times, it would top the bestseller list overnight. It takes your mind off of current headlines for a few hours.
... Wallace has made a taut nonfiction thriller out of the dramatic days between Harry S. Truman’s succession to the presidency ... Structured as a series of datelined vignettes and fashioned as a countdown, the narrative lopes through its well-chosen selection of historical moments. This is a deeply absorbing reading experience about the fateful final months of a conflict that deserves to be known in detail to all Americans. It is what a popular history book should be: propulsively paced; well researched in primary sources; and written with sympathetic imagination, bringing people to life in their important moments. It will encourage and enrich many conversations on its subject ... Wallace gives us a rich cast of characters ... vivid and engaging portraits ... Hirohito’s dramatic conference with his war council is unaccountably not part of the book’s sequence of dramatic vignettes. Nonetheless, for its vividly drawn coverage of the American side of these pivotal events, the book is deservedly the nonfiction blockbuster of the season.
... contains no surprises and will quell no controversies. But it is a compelling and highly readable account of one of the most fateful decisions in American history ... Wallace and Weiss humanize events too often reduced to technical or diplomatic arcana by telling their story through the lives of individuals ... Presented as a countdown to the final event, the book moves along at a rapid clip, with colorful anecdotes enlivening the narrative ... The authors’ breakneck prose sometimes breezes past moments in history deserving of a more thorough treatment ... At the end, Wallace and Weiss offer no argument as to the ultimate morality or immortality of the atomic bomb decision. But it is hard to disagree with their conclusion that 'it is unrealistic to think Harry Truman would make any other choice' ... Perhaps unintentionally, Countdown also underscores just how much this country has changed in the past 75 years.
Wallace charts the perilous and unsure course of the U.S. during the waning days of WWII, capturing the various personae who brought the bomb to fruition. With minute-by-minute suspense, Wallace masterfully writes of the trying time and the Allies’ omnipresent doubt up to the very last second.
... propulsive ... Wallace, with help from journalist Weiss, writes with verve and an eye for cinematic detail, though much of the story is well-known. Still, this accessible, evenhanded account serves as an entertaining introduction to one of the most momentous decisions in world history.
Wallace presents a mostly entertaining, if familiar, history of the three months between Truman’s taking office and the dropping of the bombs, but he only briefly engages with issues like the suffering of innocent Japanese and the intense misgivings of scientists like Albert Einstein ... A brisk work of history that weaves together the various factions responsible for the deployment of the first nuclear bombs.
