The Most Awful Responsibility

""“Alex Wellerstein clears away the dead timber in this gripping investigation of President Truman’s relationship with the atomic bomb. I thought I knew the story but learned much that I didn’t know. Outstanding!"" — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize Laureate for The Making of the Atomic Bomb “What if so much of what we always thought we knew about Truman’s use of the bombs wasn’t true? If Alex Wellerstein is right, you will never be able to have another discussion about the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 without taking into account the points made in this book. This is historical research at its best. It challenges long-held beliefs on the decision to use atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki while highlighting why nuclear weapons evolved as they did after 1945.” — Dan Carlin, host of the Hardcore History podcast and author of the New York Times bestseller The End Is Always Near “Harry Truman presided over the only wartime use of nuclear weapons, and he also more forcefully checked military encroachments on this weapon than any subsequent commander-in-chief — all while the world descended into a rather hot Cold War. In this page-turning account, Alex Wellerstein brings us closer than we have ever been to understanding the paradoxes of how, through numerous actions and inactions, large and small, one quite ordinary man — perhaps because he was so ordinary — shaped the nuclear age.” — Michael D. Gordin, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, author of Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War