I was oddly disappointed with this book. The preface to the book by the authors really piqued my interest but the actual book, despite the subject matter, came across quite flat in many parts. There is something missing here. I think that the lack of some backstory for most of the major participants resulted in name after name after name, which documents who was involved but gave little or no context. I had to turn to the internet for information about some of the people involved. The internet barely existed when this was first published in 1995. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the Hiroshima bomb, lived to 92 years of age and died on November 1, 2007.

For me the main value of this book was the photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which are primarily in the middle two (of eight) chapters of the book. ( )