By Richard RhodesOur Price: $16.00 Our Item Code: bomb Postage Code: book4
886 Pages, Trade Paperback |
| Our Review | Opinion of the webmaster, subject to debate |
This is the Pulitzer Prize winning history how the first atomic bomb was conceived, developed and used. At almost 900 pages, this book is surprisingly readable, and even if you don't read it cover to cover, it is useful as a ready-reference to the early atomic era. We keep it handy to look up the names of early participants in the Black World, and after getting to know the cast of characters, like Teller and Curtis LeMay, it is easy to see where Kubrick got his inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. Rhodes covers such little known aspects as the Soviets' quite effective espionage efforts and how they were more afraid of us than we of them. As a model of secret operations, the Manhattan Project seemed to do things right, and managed to keep its huge undertaking almost completely invisible to the enemy. Somehow, the team worked together to make the bomb work, but then the dissention began as personalities clashed and some questioned the wisdom of what they had done. This is definitive reference for this aspect of American history, interesting to anyone who has lived in this century. -- Glenn Campbell
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| Information from the Publisher | Always supportive |
The National Book Critics Circle Award
Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly--or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers--Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann-stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.
Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been compared in its sweep and importance to William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fail of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.
--Tracy Kidder
"A stirring intellectual adventure ... clear, fast-paced, and indispensable."
--Carl Sagan
"A monumental and enthralling history ... Alive and vibrant in the book are all the scientists . . . and each human being stands vividly revealed as a man of science, of conscience, of doubts or of hubris."
--San Francisco Chronicle
Table of Contents
Part Two: A Peculiar Sovereignty
Part Three: Life and Death
Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
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"A great book. Mr. Rhodes has done a beautiful job, and I don't see how anyone can ever top it."
--LUIS W. ALVAREZ, Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1968
". . . what I read already impressed me with the author's knowledge of much of the history of the science which led to the.development of nuclear energy and nuclear bombs and of the personalities which contributed in the U.S. to the development of these. I was particularly impressed by his realization of the importance of Leo Szilard's contributions which are almost always underestimated but which he fully realizes and perhaps even overestimates. I hope the book will find a wide readership."
-EUGENE P. WIGNER, Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1963
"I found The Making of the Atomic Bomb well written, interesting and one of the best in the great family of books on the subject. It is fascinating as a novel, and I have learned from it many things I did not know. Mr. Rhodes has done his homework conscientiously and intelligently."
--EMILIO SEGRE, Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1959
"Mr. Rhodes gives careful attention to the role which chemists played in developing the bomb. The Making of the Atomic Bomb strikes me as the most complete account of the Manhattan Project to date.
-GLENN T. SEABORG, Nobel Laureate for Chemistry, 1951
''The Making of the Atomic Bomb is an epic worthy of Milton. Nowhere else have I seen the whole story put down with such elegance and gusto and in such revealing detail and simple language which carries the reader through wonderful and profound scientific discoveries and their application .
The great figures of the age, scientific, military, and political, come to life when confronted with the fateful and awesome decisions which faced them in this agonizing century. This great book dealing with the most profound problems of the 20th century can help us to apprehend the opportunities and pitfalls that face the world in the 21st.''
I.I. RABI, Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1944
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