... but that machine didn't know about the bomb, and they hadn't seen the studies that there would be no significant targets left to bomb, conventional or atomic, by January 1946.

I'm not a "revisionist" historian, I'm educated as an evolutionary biologist. My approach to history is the same as my approach to economics. I think our human need to create a "story" usually obscures the reality. A decisive end to World War II, two bombs, bang bang, and the good guys win is a dramatic story that does not reflect the reality of amoral and senseless human wars. If you want to know what was really happening, map out the flows of energy and resources first; some of the stories told will reflect the reality of those, many will not.

That the "atomic bomb saved the lives of those who would have invaded, and the lives of a soon-to-be-cold starving fight-to-the-death people of Japan" is a myth.