Rating: **** 4 stars

Jason Hook,
Hiroshima.
Series Days That Shook the World, Hodder Wayland, 2000.

(This title is reviewed together with D-Day, by Sean Sheehan, Hodder Wayland)

The end of the end of WWII (and the beginning of the Cold War) was signalled by the obscenity of Hiroshima. Hook provides a chillingly impartial account of the political and military background to the dropping of Little Boy (only 3 out of the 55 hospitals remained in Hiroshima) and its repercussions (which are still resonantly with us) through Bikini Atoll, Aldermaston marches, Cuban missile crisis and Doctor Strangelove.

This is a pair of worthy companions to a serious look at the Second World War and its legacies, and we all have to live with them.

Ted Percy