Chronicling Crossroads

摘要

Americans could appear brash and maybe occasionally juvenile to the Allies during World War Ⅱ. Yet the vigor with which the US prosecuted that war to victory, punctuated by two atom bomb drops that astonished even Americans who had closely followed the war, produced a postwar atmosphere that was at once heady and sobering. It would be decades before pundits began calling the 20th century the American Century. Nonetheless, in 1946 the United States was the world's sole nuclear power, and unlike most combatants it had emerged from the war with its industry and infrastructure largely intact.