On one hand, the book reads like a riveting novel as Wallace reveals the machinations and internal debates among the scientific community to devise a workable atomic bomb as quickly as possible...But Countdown 1945 is also a profound story of decision making at the highest levels — and of pathos.

You’ve heard about it in school, movies and novels, but the true story, told in Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss’ Countdown 1945, is more exciting than those tomes you cracked open in American history class.

... Wallace has made a taut nonfiction thriller out of the dramatic days between Harry S. Truman’s succession to the presidency.

... contains no surprises and will quell no controversies. But it is a compelling and highly readable account of one of the most fateful decisions in American history.

Wallace charts the perilous and unsure course of the U.S. during the waning days of WWII, capturing the various personae who brought the bomb to fruition. With minute-by-minute suspense, Wallace masterfully writes of the trying time and the Allies’ omnipresent doubt up to the very last second..

... propulsive.

Wallace presents a mostly entertaining, if familiar, history of the three months between Truman’s taking office and the dropping of the bombs, but he only briefly engages with issues like the suffering of innocent Japanese and the intense misgivings of scientists like Albert Einstein.