We're not really a history buff by any stretch of the imagination.........but one singular chunk of time has always obsessed us totally.........the development, creation and deployment of the first two atom bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Since adolescence, we've devoured whatever books and films devoted themselves to this subject, including the two major theatrical films covering this earth-shattering piece of human history.
The films we speak of are MGM's rah-rah patriotic 1947 bomb-fest "The Beginning Or The End" and 1989's more post-modern sardonic view of the events, "Fat Man And Little Boy". And we've posted already on both movies, respectively on 3/27/17 and 8/13/17.
Now, in quick succession, came two more books on the events that so fascinate us and naturally, we inhaled them as quick as we could..........
Chris Wallace's "Countdown 1945" is everything we could possible want in an overview of this momentous, ominous landmark for mankind..........meticulously researched and well told in the compelling manner of a breaking news story.
The bonus we love here: the wealth of previously unknown or unreported backstories of the many participants....... including.the political jockeying and bickering that went on among the Army/Air Force brass on Tinian island, the staging and take-off base for the Capt. Paul Tibbets' B-29 bomber "Enola Gay" that dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima.
Also included is President Harry Truman's exhaustive diplomatic efforts to deal with Russia's monstrous dictator Joseph Stalin.......and the feisty President's decision to use the atomic bomb to force Japan into unconditional surrender and avoid a brutal, bloody invasion of Japan that could potentially cost an additional 240,000 American lives.
Altogether superb storytelling and riveting history......4 stars (****)
The same holds true for Greg Mitchell's chatty, breezily entertaining "The Beginning Or The End", which documents, with a good amount of knowing wit, the bumpy, chaotic creation and production of Hollywood's first take on the atomic age by its premier studio, Metro Goldwyn Mayer......
What amused us here was that the making of film, regardless of its monumental and....uh....explosive subject matter, proceeded no differently than any other major motion picture.....(and we were fascinated to find out the genesis of this project began with the urging of actress Donna Reed and her former high school science teacher, who'd worked on the Manhattan project to develop the bomb.
And by 'no different', we mean the pre-production of the film became a typical Hollywood clash of egos and conflicting agendas.....executives, producers, screenwriters, White House operatives. politicians, pundits, journalists, the atomic scientists, President Truman himself.......and the two battling titans of Los Alamos, physicist Robert Oppenheimer and General Groves.
Irony of ironies.......the final resulting film - romanticized, Hollywood-ized, brazenly fictional in parts and drenched in patriotic pandering, found no favor with 1940's movie goers. To put it bluntly and metaphorically.......it bombed.
But for anyone interested in both this particular period of history and the peculiar history of making a major motion picture about it (yes, please!)......this book's a 4 star (****) double whammy.
We'd normally hesitate to recommend reading books about the birth of apocalyptic nuclear warfare in the middle of a pandemic........but what the hell, these are damn good books and BQ says don't miss either.
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