...a huge slice of American life over the past half-century ... described with wonderful lucidity and, what is even more important, an unfailingly perceptive instinct for their significance in the lives and thoughts of ordinary Americans.... Everyone, most particularly younger generations for whom the nuclear events of the past half-century are remote abstractions, should read this book.
In a fine closing essay, Boyer draws on the controversy over the 1995 Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian to suggest the still unsettled and unsettling position that Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold in our national psyche. The author's organization and presentation of his diverse material is skillful as always, making this informative, engaging and perhaps most important for Boyer, provocative.