the original explanation of why Truman gave the order." Historian Marilyn Young observed in a featured review of the book in the American Historical Review that "few historians I know have taken up the central ethical and historical issues surrounding the first, and thus far only, use of nuclear bombs as seriously as Alperovitz." A full-length ABC documentary anchored by Peter Jennings brought the argument to a broader audience. Other documentaries including one by the BBC and a dramatization by a German television network helped increase international interest. Community wealth-building and the pluralist commonwealth model Alperovitz's work as a political economist has centered on theoretical and practical alternatives to both corporate capitalism and traditional state socialism. He holds that the architecture of both suffers from centralized power that fails to support liberty, equality, ecological sustainability, genuine participatory democracy, and community. Challenging both theories of reform and of revolution, he emphasizes a model based on the evolutionary reconstruction of economic institutions, communities, and the nation as a whole. In American Beyond Capitalism and other books and essays, Alperovitz offers an integrated systemic model for a pluralist commonwealth based on democratizing ownership of economic institutions at all levels, a regional decentralization of economic and political power, and the building of forms of community wealth-holding and a culture of participatory democracy. The pluralist commonwealth model includes diverse forms of democratized ownership, from worker-community cooperatively owned production firms to municipally owned institutions, public banks, utilities, land trusts, and public transportation. Regional scaling of larger public enterprises and longer-term political decentralization are proposed as ways to transform and displace extractive elements of financialized corporate capitalism. Alperovitz also acknowledges the utility of certain forms of private enterprises and markets along with participatory economic planning. This model attempts to expand the limits of political economic possibilities beyond the polarity between state ownership and capitalism. The model also proposes a reduction in the workweek, providing workers more free time and allowing for more liberty and democratic participation. It proposes that as population continues to grow, a long-term devolution of the national state in the direction of regional structures can allow for democratic participation and democratic management of ecological issues. In a 1978 profile, biographer Ron Chernow wrote: "Alperovitz believes that co-ops and other experimental enterprises can flourish in strong, stable communities…When Alperovitz talks about socialism (and he usually avoids the term, as much for its imprecision as its