Can anyone recommend the top books on reading about the traditionalist and revisionist view points of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima? Just getting into this subject and wanted to read more but get a balanced view point.
Thanks in advance
A great "meta" review of the literature is J. Samuel Walker, "Recent Literature on Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground," Diplomatic History 29, no. 2 (April 2005), 311-334. It goes over a lot of the literature and lists the key ones.
But basically, for the old-school "revisionist" accounts, see Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed and Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. For "traditionalist" accounts, see Robert Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult and D.M. Giangreco, Hell to Pay. For a more "fresh" take that traditionalists think is revisionist, see Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy. For a deliberately middle-of-the-road take, see J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction.