"Father Miscamble is a history professor at the University of Notre Dame and thus is at home with the theological and moral aspects surrounding the decision to unleash the world's first atomic bombs. He is also familiar with the political and military exigencies of the decision. He takes the reader carefully through the genesis of the bomb-building Manhattan Project, as planned by Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt originally for the bomb's use against Nazi Germany, and through the calculations of the key Allied decision makers, including Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, and Adm. William Leahy, the head of the Joint Chiefs." -Wall Street Journal

"This book, by the priest and cold war historian Wilson D. Miscamble, is a volume in the Cambridge Essential Histories series, which is (according to its statement of purpose) 'devoted to introducing critical events, periods or individuals in history … through thesis-driven, concise volumes.' Concise The Most Controversial Decision certainly is: it packs into its 150 pages discussions that other scholars have spent careers grappling with." -Barry Gewen, The New Republic

"In writing this book, Father Miscamble has done us a great service." -The Rev. Michael P. Orsi, The Washington Times

"Notre Dame profe ssor Wilson Miscamble has previously written about the blindly unforeseen handoff of the American government from Roosevelt to Truman on April 12, 1945, during the endgame of World War II. He now brings his wise and wide-ranging knowledge of the complicated decisions left for the American president at that time to one specific major decision: whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan." -Jay Pasachoff, The Key Reporter

"Recommended." -Choice