How long does it take to read Prompt and Utter Destruction?
J. Samuel Walker
Prompt and Utter Destruction by J. Samuel Walker takes about 2 hours 36 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 36 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1997. 142 pages, about 39,050 words.
6 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 20 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 36 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 38 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
More than fifty years later, the decision that brought prompt and utter destruction to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to generate enormous interest and controversy. In this concise and balanced account, J. Samuel Walker offers a new look at the events and circumstances that lay behind President Truman's use of atomic bombs against Japan. Combining extensive documentary research with a critical reading of both American and Japanese scholarship, Walker examines the popular mythology about how the decision was made, delineating what was known and not known by American leaders at the time and evaluating the role of U.S.-Soviet relations and American domestic politics. Rising above an often polemical debate, he presents an accessible synthesis of previous work and an important, original contribution to our understanding of the events that ushered in the atomic age.
Subjects: Atomic bomb, Foreign relations, Bombe atomique, Relations extérieures, Nuclear bombs, HISTORY
