as the diary of U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, in this work Alperovitz offers what Harper's called "the most definitive account we are likely to see of why Hiroshima was destroyed, and how an official history justifying that decision was subsequently crafted and promulgated by the national security establishment." He argues that the preponderance of evidence suggests that it was not military necessity but rather the U.S.'s geostrategic motives vis-à-vis the Soviet Union that most influenced Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Although Alperovitz acknowledges that "a full and unqualified answer as to why the atomic bomb was used is neither essential nor possible", he says that "what is important is whether, when the bomb was used, the president and his top advisers understood that it was not required to avoid a long and costly invasion, as they later claimed and as most Americans still believe." America Beyond Capitalism In this work Alperovitz chronicles growing discontent with the current political economy status quo, and diagnoses the long-term structural ills of the American political and economic system as inherent to capitalism's systemic architecture. He writes, "The book argues that the only way for the United States to once again honor its great historic values—above all equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy—is to build forward to achieve what amounts to systemic change...fundamental change—indeed, radical systemic change...If equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy can truly no longer be sustained by the political and economic arrangements of the current system, this defines the beginning phases of what can only be called a systemic crisis—an era of history in which the political-economic system must slowly lose legitimacy because the realities it produces contradict the values it proclaims. Moreover, if the system itself is at fault, then self-evidently—indeed, by definition—a solution would ultimately require the development of a new system." Alperovitz offers a remedy in the form of grassroots experiments currently underway in thousands of U.S. communities, which he sees as precedents that popular movements can use to plant the seeds of the next, more democratic economy. He points to worker cooperatives, municipal ownership of utilities, community land trusts, and larger institutions such as public banks and public transportation, as a roadmap for "laying foundations to change a faltering system that increasingly fails to support the great American values of equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy." Unjust Deserts With his co-author Lew Daly, Alperovitz