The Making of the Atomic BombThe definitive history of nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project. From the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan, Richard Rhodes’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence. From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story. Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - breic - LibraryThingAmazing story. I had expected just a story of the development of the atomic bomb itself, but the first half covers the development of the necessary atomic physics (very well explained). Full of ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - nmele - LibraryThingRhodes' tome (788 pages of narrative) is impressive, comprehensive and thought provoking. He begins with Leo Szilard conceiving of a chain reaction, then traces the history of nuclear physics ... Read full review
Contents
| 13 | |
| 29 | |
| 53 | |
| 78 | |
| 104 | |
| 134 | |
Exodus | 168 |
Stirring and Digging | 198 |
Physics and Desert Country | 443 |
Different Animals | 486 |
Revelations | 522 |
The Evils of This Time | 561 |
Life and Death | 615 |
Trinity | 617 |
Tongues of Fire | 679 |
Epilogue | 749 |
An Extensive Burst | 233 |
A Peculiar Sovereignty | 277 |
Neutrons | 279 |
Cross Sections 3 18 | 318 |
A Communication from Britain | 357 |
The New World | 394 |
Acknowledgments | 789 |
Notes | 791 |
Bibliography | 848 |
Index | 863 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alamos alpha particles American Army Arthur Compton atomic bomb began Berkeley Berlin beryllium Bethe Bohr's bombardment British Bush Byrnes Chadwick chain reaction Committee Compton Conant cyclotron Edward Teller Einstein electrons element energy Ernest Lawrence Eugene Wigner experiment explosive Fermi fire fission Frisch German graphite Groves Hahn Hans Bethe Heisenberg Hiroshima Hitler hydrogen implosion isotope Japan Japanese Jewish Jews knew laboratory later Lawrence Leo Szilard letter looked Los Alamos Manhattan Project mass Meitner ment miles military neutrons Niels Bohr night Nobel nuclear nucleus Oppenheimer Otto Frisch paper Peierls physicist physics pile plutonium polonium possible President problem produced quoted in ibid radiation radioactive radium remembers Robert Robert Oppenheimer Roosevelt Rutherford says scientific scientists Seaborg Segrè Soviet Stimson target Teller thought Tibbets Tinian tion told tons took Truman tube Ulam United uranium weapon Weart and Szilard Wigner writes wrote
Popular passages
Page 29 - All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them...
Page 390 - This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.
Page 49 - It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.
Page 314 - Roosevelt, quickly understanding, "what you are after is to see that the Nazis don't blow us up.
Page 28 - I crossed the street, it suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element which is split by neutrons and which would emit two neutrons when it absorbed one neutron, such an element, if assembled in sufficiently large mass, could sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
Page 245 - How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.
Page 390 - Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with only the barest possibilities that the Japanese Government might come back and offer to continue. Japanese future action unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment.
Page 30 - But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred, and may yet occur in the heavens; though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins; the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Making of the Atomic Bomb |
| Author | Richard Rhodes |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, 2012 |
| ISBN | 1439126224, 9781439126226 |
| Length | 928 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / General History / Military / World War II |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |