September 2nd will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS Missouri, ending the Second World War. The US decision to drop two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—what drove Japan to surrender, at least in popular history—is still controversial to this day.

How did the mass US bombing campaign come about? Did the US believe the atomic bomb was the only possible or the least bad option? Did the atomic bomb really push Japan to surrender—or was it on its last legs anyway? Famed historian Richard Overy tries to tackle these questions, and more, in his latest work of Second World War history: Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan.

Richard Overy is Honorary Research Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain’s most distinguished historians. His major works include The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia (WW Nortonm 2004), winner of the 2005 Wolfson Prize, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilization, 1919-1939 (Penguin, 2010) and The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945 (Penguin, 2013), which won a Cundill Award for Historical Excellence in 2014. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.