140 Days to Hiroshima: Inside the Final War Room Clashes and the Countdown to Armageddon, 

Historian David Dean Barrett puts readers inside the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo during the desperate final months of World War II. Americas strategic bombing campaign systematically incinerated Japans cities while the leaders of the Pacifics two military giants waged a war of strategy, cultural differences, and diplomatic intransigence. The military brain trust of the United States called for unconditional surrender. Japans senior leaders responded with a plan of all-out military and civilian resistance termed Ketsu-Go, or The Decisive Battle. What Emperor Hirohito and his Supreme Council at the Direction of War seemed unable to grasp was the Americans development of a catastrophic ace-in-the-hole. As US leaders weighed a two-phase invasion of the Japanese mainland that would have been twice as large as D-Day and astronomical in casualty count, a nuclear clock was ticking--America was arming itself with the ultimate weapon.

Within the war-room debates, two men--one Japanese, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo; and one American, President Harry S. Truman--assumed leading roles. Togo risked assassination in his struggle to convince his dysfunctional government, dominated by militarists and determined to fight the decisive battle on Japanese soil, to save his country from annihilation. In Washington, an untested President Truman inherited the mandate of unconditional surrender, the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War, the plans for the invasion of the Japanese Homeland, and the development of the most terrible weapon the world has ever seen.