Alex Wellerstein

The Most Awful Responsibility – Alex Wellerstein

My new book, THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY goes on sale TODAY! It is a NEW argument about TRUMAN AND THE ATOMIC BOMB, from Hiroshima through the Korean War, from HarperCollins. alexwellerstein.com/writing/book...

My advance-ordered copy of Prof. Wellerstein's new book about President Truman and the bomb arrived today. His RESTRICTED DATA: THE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR SECRECY IN THE UNITED STATES (2021) combined exhaustive research with pellucid writing; I am looking forward to enjoying more of the same here.

One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential

I eagerly await the call from my local bookstore to say they have it!

(I'm also super interested in who "another country" is.)

There was US polling awhile ago that asked who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan and some significant chunk of Americans weren't sure, which, you know, shows the limits of such polling...

I like that the Germans are split on the question — seems like a fair assessment of it! The US and French results are unsurprising, the UK result is wiiillld by comparison. It is a bit of an unfair question to be sure.

When/where I grew up, the first two were basically framed as bad things that the US did, the third was a bad thing that was done by Germany, and the fourth was framed as a totally justifiable thing, not like the other three at all.

Super interesting. I am very interested how countries do "civic morality" education through history — in the US, the major touch-points when I was young were slavery, Native Americans, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb.

The top book of the year as far as I'm concerned and I haven't even read it.

I am assuming the argument is shocking and not my fact of putting up an advertisement!!! :-)

And yes, it is a very different argument! But I think a substantiated one! (And no shade to McCullough, but he was writing in a different time and with a different goal...)

(I also put one small advertisement for it on the NUKEMAP's page, but I am so embarrassed by the idea of advertising that I made it basically hide itself after a couple of seconds, like the opposite of a pop-up ad. I'M SORRY I GOTTA SELL SOME BOOKS I FEEL BAD ABOUT IT I'M SORRY)

(It is kind of amazing, and slightly terrifying, to have to now go through and update every website, etc., of mine to say that it is no longer "forthcoming" but actually, finally, amazingly, HERE. HERE AND NOW.)

"The Most Awful Responsibility" My new book on Truman and the bomb will be released on December 9!

I recently wrote up a description of the book and its argument, if you are curious about its extremely counter-intuitive argument — that Truman was perhaps the most anti-nuclear president of the 20th century: doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-most-a...

The Most Awful Responsibility – Alex Wellerstein

My new book, THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY goes on sale TODAY! It is a NEW argument about TRUMAN AND THE ATOMIC BOMB, from Hiroshima through the Korean War, from HarperCollins. alexwellerstein.com/writing/book...

That's really interesting — I would love to know more about how GCSE history teaches this moment/question. The standard US pedagogy on this seems deliberately stacked so that it produces certain deeply-held moral outcomes (although polling suggests that over time this has become less effective).

Currently reading this and it's obviously fascinating but also weirded out by a memory of GCSE history when the set question was "Did Truman do the right thing by dropping the bomb on Japan" and the correct answer should have been "Sir, I'm 15."

"A So-Called 'Hobbit' Peoples' History of the United States" — I can see it now.

I'm just imagining some lil' guys in the mountains writing books about homo sapiens sapiens from their perspective. "Those guys have always been jerks, let's be clear."

Could be, although Christmas Present is the one who keeps kids under his robe

OK, separate from the question of what sights the three ghosts would treat him to, I think the real question is who the initial ghost (the Marley equivalent) ought to be. I am thinking Roy Cohn.

Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the White House
not a creature was tweeting
except... wait.. no, a creature was definitely tweeting. oh jeez. could someone stop him? can someone... anyone... I guess not. I guess not.

"#1 New Release in US Presidents" is probably the top of a very small hill. But I am pleased that I am beating out "A Trump Family Christmas."

It does indeed run counter to them!

The new National Security Strategy is a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.

From the AskHistorians community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the AskHistorians community

OK, so for the next few hours, I will be answering questions on Reddit's AskHistorians forum about my new book -- feel free to pop over there if you are so inclined! reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

The headline, the main takeaway from a European viewpoint is this:

The transatlantic relationship as we know it is over. Yes, we kinda knew this. But this is now official US White House policy. Not a sppech, not a statement. The West as it used to be no longer exists.

So, OK, what if I had known this as a kid, and I signed up for track, but I was STILL not very athletic? (Which is VERY plausible.) Can't win 'em all! But that doesn't mean the actual diagnosis isn't useful, or that I wouldn't have benefited from it if it had been much earlier.

If I had known as a kid, I would have insisted on being enrolled in sports that didn't involve locating objects in 3D space — I might have been a good runner! As an adult, I make sure to take this into account in situations where "clumsiness" matters.

I was diagnosed as an adult with having pretty poor depth perception — 40% of "normal." This helped me make a lot of sense of the past (it "de-moralized" why I was so bad at sports as a kid), but it also helps me practically as an adult, because it explains the root cause of my "clumsiness."

US diplomats are being asked to assist fascists in Europe as part of national security.