Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 232 pp. $27.00

In this ambitious study, Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko tackle two enduringly controversial topics: the U.S. decision to develop and use nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II and the role of the nuclear bomb in the origins of the ensuing diplomatic Cold War with the Soviet Union. In exploring the many complicated issues raised by the bomb from the birth of the Manhattan Project through the failure of the Baruch Plan for international control at the end of 1946, Craig and Radchenko offer interesting new evidence from the Soviet side. They also make good use of the existing literature, particularly works by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Gregg Herken, David Holloway, Martin J. Sherwin, and Wilson Miscamble. Throughout, they address the many controversies surrounding these issues in a calm, deliberative manner without any hint of the rancor that has sometimes attended academic debates on the nuclear bomb and the Cold War....