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More than fifty years later, the decision that brought prompt and utter destruction to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to generate enormous interest and controversy. In this concise and balanced account, J. Samuel Walker offers a new look at the events and circumstances that lay behind President Truman's use of atomic bombs against Japan. Combining extensive documentary research with a critical reading of both American and Japanese scholarship, Walker examines the popular mythology about how the decision was made, delineating what was known and not known by American leaders at the time and evaluating the role of U.S.-Soviet relations and American domestic politics. In part, his findings support the traditional view that Truman authorized the bombings primarily for military reasons: to end the war as soon as possible. He takes issue, however, with the contention that failure to use the bomb would have led inevitably to an invasion of Japan costing hundreds of thousands of American lives. Rising above an often polemical debate, Walker presents an accessible synthesis of previous work and an important, original contribution to our understanding of the events that ushered in the atomic age.