As you said, this is 20/20 hindsight armchair revisionism. Yes, the first use of these war-changing weapons is and should be a matter of continuing study but much of what this review reveals is the ‘modern’ revulsion against the Atom Bomb use PERIOD.
I do not know if either author mentioned the following facts, but the horrific ‘conventional’ fire-bomb raids of Dresden in the ETO and Tokyo also ‘melted’ people! The Tokyo raids killed more people than either A-Bomb (I believe), yet those attacks were deemed proper as the Japanese had moved manufacturing down to household workshops.
There is credible evidence that an invasion of Japan could have resulted in a stalemate where the Allies would have so many casualties with so little gain that some, including Britain, could not sustain the cost and would withdraw. We, today, forget how very close to the edge that Britain came to exhaustion in this war. If you read the early Ian Fleming James Bond novels, you realize that the British wartime economic restrictions persisted for more than a decade after the war.
What would have happened then to the nascent Cold War is a study for alternative history and there are many who have written their speculations. What I know is that the death tolls for a non-ABomb scenario seem to exceed the losses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by magnitudes on both sides.
Of course, every August Anniversary brings these tomes to book reviewers attention and a reprise of this argument. So this will repeat next year and so on as a hook to hang another view that being a victim of an A-Bomb is a bad thing. What a surprise!
On a slightly different note in this thread:
"Thank you Clement Attlee and your socialist government! Conditions were WORSE in Britain after the war because of your 'wonderful' ideology - currently being visited on the USA by Obama."
I can think of no reason to lose the life of one American to save the life of one, ten or one hundred million attacking ruthless barbarians.
It is truly sad that so many people who did not make the decision to kill 3000 Americans while they slept on a Sunday morning without warning had to die for the decisions of those that did. I do not weep for those Japanese who died but am glad for those Americans who were allowed to live because Little Boy and Fat man were dropped.
It is wrong to think only of the harm caused by the Atomic Bombs while not considering the death and destruction caused by the Axis powers. Japan was ruthless, had they had the bombs they would have been dropped on New York and Washington, D.C. without hesitation and all of us today would be speaking Japanese.