Was the atomic bomb a war crime?

For the first time, Albert’s students overwhelmingly think so. Plus reader responses, links, book club info, & bonus audio from baby P.

Happy Lunar New Year, friends! Goodbye Rat, Hello Ox!

Making your own new year's greeting card is all the rage in Taiwan. Here’s what Albert’s dad made:

The print shows a water buffalo in the bottom right. (The water buffalo, a Taiwanese shui niu, is one of the many ox-like beings in East Asia.) The artist is a family friend from Yuli, Hualien, a rural town on the eastern coast of Taiwan, where Albert’s parents also grew up. The greeting—niu zhuan qian kun—is a pun on the phrase “to turn things around.”

Albert on teaching the atomic bomb and the sea-change in his classroom:

First, a graph. (I typed the question hastily into an online polling app; it should really read “Do you think the use of atomic bombs in World War II was a war crime?”)