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This week, I'm going to recommend Robert Oppenheimer, A Life Inside the Center, by Ray Monk.

Oppenheimer's combination of genius and depression, his brilliant scientific mind,

and his love for the obscure, at least from an American perspective, history of Vedic India,

made him one of the most interesting figures in modern American history.

Monk's biography is a sweeping look at his life,

and I drew on it heavily for writing last week's episode.

Go to audiblechild.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 110, Rain of Ruin, Part 3.

In July 1944, Japan definitively lost the war against the United States.

Arguably, the war had been lost much sooner than that. From the time of the Battle of Midway in summer

1942, the Japanese had been on a defensive footing and had been steadily

losing ground with no real plan as to how to recover. However, the fall of the island

of Saipan marked a clear dividing line between, this might not be going well, and

this is definitely not going well, for two

reasons. First, Saipan was the first Japanese stronghold to come under American control that was also

within bomber range of the home Japanese islands themselves. From this point on, American bombers could hit Japan with increasing frequency.

Now, bombing raids had already started, but they'd either been one-offs, like the infamous

Doolittle raid, or relied heavily on underdeveloped and hard-to-supply bases within the nationalist

...