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The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Lansing Lamont's Day of Trinity was the first book I read about the Manhattan Project. In what turns out to be a decent if uncritical look at the pursuit of atomic weaponry, Lansing was given exclusive access throughout the life of the Manhattan Project. In reading the book you feel like you have a fly-on-the-wall view of the process of producing the first uranium and plutonium bombs.
Lamont's telling is a bit thin though, not going into the motivations of the scientists and only barely touching on the geopolitical situation at the time. This not to say that it is craven, but it is overly sympathetic and a bit too rah-rah about atomic weaponry and their usefulness.
In the book, Mr. Rhodes takes the time to explore the base motivations of the scientists. Ever wonder exactly what motivated Teller's bloodthirstiness? What inspired the scientists to continue driving toward the atomic prize even after the fall of Germany? Rhodes has spent the time researching exactly what made the major players tick.
This is all well and good, but probably the most enjoyable thing about the book is how it's not really a story about the men so much as the science they pursued. The book is not really about the bombs, either, but more the history of physics and physicists.
Always keeping the science accessible and exciting, he manages to explain concisely the process of discovery and experimentation and how the significant events of history affected both the project's progress.
The way that Mr. Rhodes tracks the movements of physicists from anti-semitic Germany to Los Alamos, Chicago and other centers of the nuclear arms program is especially compelling and lends keen insight into the motivations of the physicists involved.
One of the most important (and stomach churning) things about the book is how it shows how cheap human life became in the first half of the 20th century. I think that it is important, when considering the horror of dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that people have the proper historical context before coming to one conclusion or another about the morality of the dropping of the bomb. This book gives that context.
This is not to say that this is a perfect book. Reaching as it does from the mid 1800s through to the dawn of Teller's super-bomb, the book's scope means that some discoveries and scientists don't get the in-depth coverage that Bohr, Szilard and Oppenheimer do, and he doesn't talk much at all about the espionage that surrounded nuclear development. Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered.
Those caveats aside, this is a terrific book well worth checking out if you are interested in the birth of modern physics, the men and women behind it, or the most powerful weapon that has ever been used on humans.
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I read this a few years ago, and would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the bomb.
There are a lot of good things about it, but one of my favorites is the fact that the book is filled with direct quotes from letters, diaries, memos, etc from the people involved. You really get a good idea of what the people were actually thinking in their own words, not just the historical summary.
One thing that surprises me about his review is that he mentioned the cheapness of life early on in the century, but doesn't mention the chapter on the effects of the bomb. One of the most powerful chapters in the book is amost nothing but direct quotes from interviews and diaries of folks who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were bombed. It's very powerful, and a good reminder of just what a nuke actually does to people.
It goes past Hiroshima and Nagasaki somewhat, but not tremendously far. Basically, you're looking at a history of nuclear physics, chemistry, and the Manhattan Project. The H-bomb stuff is almost a postscript, but a longish one.
This is a very interesting book, btw. If you set aside the atomic bomb issues, it would still be an interesting history of chemistry and physics. I learned a lot more than I expected to learn when I read it a couple fo years ago.
GF
Lots of petrified grits
It also takes a look at the history and philosophy of the late 1800's that lead to the development of chemical weapons used in WWI, and how the atomic was the natural evolution of these events/ideas. This is the first book that I read about the atomic bomb that brings these things into light.
I agree that the book does focus quite a bit on the science it also brings the scientist's lives to life.
It also points out that there is a valley in Romania ? (i believe, it has been a couple of years since i have read this book) that has a huge density of nobel prize winnign scientists. He looks at the methods used in their elementary education that may have contributed to this one area producing a disproportionate amount of nobel laureates.
All in all, I agree it is a wonderful book. I also recommended his book "Deadly Feasts" which takes a look at prion dieseases. Mad-cow is a prion disease. These are unique as the are a particular protein that can cause infections. David Brin references these in nifty ways in his book "Kiln People" - also a good read.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
The cheapness of human life in WWII wasn't really related to nuclear weapons. The Allied Air Forces were firebombing "enemy" cities with conventional weapons long before Hiroshima. Objective: create blast-furnace-hot city-sized fires that left nothing but half-melted human bones amid the ash & rubble. Method: hundreds or thousands of bombers and an unlimited supply of incendiary bombs.
The Japanese experts who looked over Hiroshima shortly after the A-bombing initially concluded that Uncle Satan had merely invented a bigger & badder conventional firebomb.
It was only later, when nukes got bigger and far more plentiful, that "hit 'em with nukes" became meaningfully worse than "hit 'em with firebombing".
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.