Malloy (U. of California at Merced) explores the diplomatic, military, political, and scientific developments that led to the dropping of nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the biographical window of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. The narrative, to a large extent, is about how the technical, political, diplomatic, military, and moral complexities led Stimson to violate his own standards of war, morality, and international relations. It is also about how there existed a large range of options concerning the bomb's potential use, now generally unacknowledged, including the choice not to use it all except as deterrence or to use it but not on civilian targets such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unfortunately, three photographs purporting to be images of Hiroshima victims appear to in fact be images from the 1923 Kanto earthquake (an errata slip has been included in accordance). Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)