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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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Anyone who buys this book will probably get arrested under the patriot act, because the govt will think you want to know how to make an atomic bomb. God help the author.
Do you always talk about yourself in third person? :)
I think this review was just an attempt at
Trolling is a art,
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.
At first glance I thought this might be an O'Reilly book. Then I had to envision which animal would be on the cover. The answer, of course, was obvious.
Godzilla.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
This book is almost 15 years old! I believe Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize, National book award, and one other major award for this book. Anyway, why the book review now?
(For those of you who will say it was published in 1995, that's for the paperback edition).
By all means, read the book, but it's hardly news.
My other sig is extremely clever...
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.
For me, the bomb is a really good case on the illegitamcy of democracy or at least the need to fix it up.
6 years
43,000 Employees
2.2 billion dollars in a time of war
7 installations
operations in 19 states, including Canada
the multinational marshalling of expertise
All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.
Once invented, the same companies that produced televisions were hired to manufactured the bomb for the government. I mean RCA, NBC, and General Electric.
Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.
Production companies prefered to depict test explosions, especially at the beautiful Bikini Atoll (now non-existant).
How can we make any claim that we live in a democracy?
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
But one person does feature prominently: General Leslie R. Groves, the military director of the project. There are a few other biographies that concentrate specifically on Groves: one by Robert Norris and another by William Lawren. But read Rhodes' book first before going into either of these.
This book was a Pultizer winner in 1988 for general non-fiction. I read it in the early 90's and enjoyed it. It is somewhat technical, but no so technical that the reader requires a degree in physics to enjoy it. It also covers the moral and political issues facing those involved with developing the bomb. Anyone interested in the history of the first half of the twentieth century will get value out of this book.
isn't a state yet. They aren't scheduled for invasion until after Iraq, N. Korea, Libya and Cuba. Don't tell the Canadians, though.
I assume you are talking about why they remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany was conquered, but before Japan was. The reason which was discussed in the book was that they had already spent a lot of money, and it had been decided by then that the concept would work. Because of the perceived usefullness of the thing to end what looked at the time to be a protracted war with the Japanese they kept going. Just because the initial motivation was as a foil for Germany, it didn't mean it was a bad idea after Germany was gone. Plus by that time the scientists were genuinely interested in the idea and really wanted to see it go boom after living in the desert on the top of a mesa for a few years.
For the motivation after the end of World War II was over, you should read Rhodes' followup book, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. This book goes a lot more into the wholesale operation of Russia's espionage business here in the US after the war and details what was going on at Los Alamos while the Cold War was really building up steam.
I haven't seen this book, but I'm gonna look out for it now.
I really did enjoy reading Feynman's accounts of the time which are included in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, his mentions focussed on the safety aspects of designing the storage facilities for the euranium.
Rhodes wrote a fantastic sequel, too: "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb."
Dark Sun is even more fascinating -- and more ominous. The idea seemed to be in the 50s and 60s to keep making bigger and bigger bombs. Some of the photographs of the test shots are amazing.
Also, if you're reading this stuff, by all means check out the play "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn. It details a meeting between Bohr (a Dane) and Heisenberg (a German) in the middle of the war. The text is pretty engaging -- both for the questions it asks (Why did Heisenberg visit Bohr? Was he trying to figure out what Bohr new about the American atomic programs) and for the background it offers about the beginnings of atomic energy. Highly recommended.
This is off-topic, but I add it because I find it fascinating: but one of the topics touched upon in 'Copenhagen' is the fact that the Germans, apparently, had constructed a reactor in Germany and where literally days away from activating it (without any safety precautions or control mechanisms) when the Allies came crashing through and destroyed it. Why this incident hasn't been made into a film -- even a crappy Bruce Willis/Stallone film -- is beyond me. It's absolutely fascinating -- the idea that the Allies may or may not have know about the reactor but were lucky enough to catch it just before it went live. The reactor was constructed at the bottom of a mountain in a deep cave. It's amazing, actually. Frayn touches upon it in his play when Bohr reminds Heisenberg -- like something straight out of a Bruce Willis movie, in fact -- that had they successfully activated the reactor, there was no mechanism to slow or even control the reaction. It could have conceivably gotten completely out of control. Absolutely frightning.
First off, if this is a troll, good job, you got me...;)
Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.
I want to see something regarding the press ban. If you mean that the government owned the footage and didn't release it, they're not obligated. If you mean supression of privately owned footage after the 50's, I want to see a source.
All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.
No shit it was. If you haven't noticed, Congress is about as secure with secrets as a gaggle of schoolgirls. They've gotten many of our operatives killed overseas by blabbing about classified material. So the fact that congress is off the distribution list for something as secret (well, supposedly) as the ATOMIC BOMB...well, duh. As for the media, you have GOT to be kidding. It was wartime. It was an experimental weapon. Yeah, it was concealed, as anything else would have been downright irresponsible.
So, your beef is that EVERYTHING in a democracy should be absolutely open, with no secrets, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, nor should it. We vote for the people we theoretically trust to deal with such matters, or to appoint others who can. Naturally, it doesn't always work, but keeping atomic research secret during WWII was pretty much a necessity. I do believe, of course, that our government has FAR overused secrecy as a tool, too often to cover its own ass. But I don't at all believe that this was an example - you can find MUCH more egregious examples (where are those Kennedy files, anyway? No, the REAL ones, Mr. Warren...)
Sorry, but war kind of necessitates secrecy. Otherwise, you tend to lose them.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"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." A little known fact was that the Japanese had been developing a nuclear device as well. In fact last year the plans for it were returned to the Japanese government from a Japanese Physicist's estate after he died. Also, some of the nuclear material that was confiscated from the Germans at the end of the European theater war was on a German submarine with japanese military officers bound for Japan. The Japanese had plans in development, and they had deals in the works to attain the needed fissile material. This confiscated material was then sent to the manhattan project to supplement the material generated for the devices that the US had been building. I have never read the discussed books, but have found that the Japanese nuclear program is alway ignored when these discussions bring up the fact that Post VE day the US continued development of the weapons. A reason for why alot of the atrocities conspired by the Japanese military were not headline news after the war like the Nuremburg trials is that the US made deals with the responsible officers of the Japanese military in which the US would recieve all of the data and matarials from the tests the US would consider too unethical to perform themselves, in exchange for immunity from prosecution for the alleged war crimes. The Japanese military nuclear program could very well have been lumped into the deal. Thus concealing a very real program.
The Manhattan Project, 1960's book, interesting read but not as detailed as Rhodes.
Brighter than a Thousand Suns, wishy washy glorification of physicists and scientists working on bomb
Military Uses of Atomic Energy, Glasstone for AEC, good but hard to find.
The Curve of Binding Energy, Mcfee, excellent must read book on terrorist use of nuclear materials
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Rhodes didn't discuss espionage much in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", but his follow-up, "Dark Sun", discusses it extensively. (Its subjects are the Soviet nuclear program, and the development of the hydrogen bomb, which really can't be discussed in detail without going deeply into intelligence and counter-intelligence).
It also takes a good hard look at the leadership of the Strategic Air Command, in the 1950s, which at times came close to advocating a preemptive nuclear strike...
There's really no better work than Richard Feyman's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman".
It might be hard to comprehend from our vantage point but, for the most part, people building the bomb really didn't *have* any emotional or philosophical issues. They had one of histories grandest scientific head rushes.
Think about. Hell, until they had actually built and used the thing to them it was just bomb, but bigger. We were making lots and LOTS of bombs at the time.
*Afterward* is a different story, after the work and the head rush were over and everyone could sit back and reflect on what God, and they, had wraught.
Richard actually went into a deep depression for a while and didn't want to do physics anymore. There were a lot like him.
But at the time they were doing it it was pretty much a grand adventure.
KFG
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.
It is common to see judgments on the use of the atomic bomb from a "holier that thou" perspective and with full use of the benefit of hindsight.
I don't envy Harry Truman. He had to make a choice between likely tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of GI lives if Japan was invaded or hundreds of thousand Japanase casualties if the bomb was used.
It was a horrible, subhuman choice to make, which is what war makes us into.
I must voice my disagreement. I don't feel that Rhodes captured the same excitement of fundamentally world-changing events. The first atomic bomb was revolution. Subsequent advances in power constituted evolution.
As to the German program, it was certainly fascinating, but got coverage in both The Making of the Atomic Bomb and in Copenhagen. Essential reading for people interested in the atomic bomb or physics. Oh, and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman was indeed most excellent. It is a genuinely entertaining look into the mind of a great modern genius.
----
So a bar walks into a physicist -- oops! wrong reference frame.
Mayhap the reviewer needs to take a look at history for a bit.
Prior to the modern era, human life was cheap. Incredibly cheap. Armies fought essentially by throwing "cannon fodder" at each other in a hope to win by overwhelming the other side's meat grinder. Industry fired employees for damaging the machines by getting thier limbs caught up in the gearworks--why not, the employees were by far less expensive than the machine!
Quite simply, the farther back in time you go, back to the dawn of our civilization, the cheaper human life gets. The 20th century didn't "cheapen" human life--we put a value on it far above that of any other time in history.
The first atomic bomb was 3 orders of magnitude larger than the largest conventional weapons.
The biggest thermonuclear bombs were another 3 orders of magnitude larger than the first atomic bomb. The increase in capabilities was just as significant, but it's hard for people to absorb that because the pictures of the explosions lack scaling context and look superficially similar.
Moving from being able to wreck a few cities with A-bombs to threatening the very existence of civilization itself (mosly through monumental releases of fallout and soot) seems revolutionary to me.
Other than the obvious demoralizing effect that it, hopefully, would have on the enemy, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very lightly defended. Due to the preciousness of the two original bombs, the US did not want to risk flying the Enola Gay into whithering the AAA fire they would have encountered over most industrial and military targets. They were relatively convenient targets.
Moral? Many thousands of American lives were saved by avoiding an invasion of mainland Japan. The Japanese started the fight. We finished it while trying to minimize our loss of life. Moral enough for me.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Cary Sublette, author of the Nuclear Weapons FAQ, has some info about "suitcase nukes" at http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/News/Terrori
note: The Nuclear Weapons FAQ can be downloaded as a zip file from here.
... is Robert Jungk's "Brighter than a Thousand Suns" which is a little dated but a real page turner. As it gives a lot of room to the scientists' perspectives (both technical and ethical )it might be one especially for the slashdot reader
Teller is about as whacked as they come.
Eddy was one of the primary culprits that wanted to use nukes in major engineering efforts, such as creating waterways and such. To such ends, tons of radioactive material was taken from the Nevada Test Site up Alaska way. That and the blasts in Amchitka (5 MegaTON below ground test). Six months of my life were spent trying to monitor the dispersal of material up Barrow, AK. Not the best of times....
My favorite Teller story is when he'd come visit us at LANL. We were working on the Edward Teller envisioned Stars Wars project. Every 6 months or so Ed would drop on by and land by helicopter in our parking lot. Between visits, a liquid hydrogen storage facility was erected and the parking lot closed / marked and not a landing site. Next visit, helicopter lands at the same place and a couple guys get out and spark up some ciggies. Safty Officer went fuggin crazy. Turned out Teller told them to disregard markings and land anyhow.
Rubbish. The number of Chinese and southeast Asian civilians slaughtered directly by Japan, or killed as a result of Japanese occupation between 1937 and 1945, numbers in the millions. Through summer 1945, it is estimated that 100,000 civilians -- in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Burma -- a month were dying, thanks to Japan, and that number was expected to continue indefinitely. Moreover, Japan itself was very likely to face an internal food crisis in winter 1945-1946 which would have exacted a heavy toll on her own population.
The atom bombs weren't dropped to "punish" Japan, and to state that the ~200K people -- military as well as civilian -- that they killed far exceeded the death toll wrought by Japan is flat out wrong.
The bombs were dropped in the hope of forcing Japan to a quick and full surrender. The nightmare at that time was an invasion of Japan, with military and civilian casualties proportional ly large compared to those on Okinawa, followed by the need to defeat individual Japanese forces in mainland Asia.
As awful as ~200K deaths is, the alternatives were worse.
I suggest you learn the Pacific/Asian war was more than Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.
We are a representative democracy. A democracy is a government where the ultimate power resides with the people. A direct democracy is a government where all policy decisions are voted on by the general populous. A representative democracy is a republic.
I have to disagree. The US government is most certainly a republic. In fact, the Constitution guarantees "to every state in this Union a Republican form of government."
The founders of our government were very particular in the form of government that they created. If you read James Madison's Essay 10 in The Federalist Papers, you'll see exactly what his feelings were on democracy, representative or direct. Those feelings are well expressed in the Constitution.
You mentioned that a democracy is a government where the ultimate power resides with the people. That is not correct...for a democracy or a republic (although it is more correct for a republic than a democracy). I know that what you mean is the concept of "majority rule". On a local level, this is probably correct, particularly regarding the initiative process, but at a federal level (which is what this thread is discussing), your definition of a republic (a government where elected officials create the laws) applies.
If the US's government was truely a representative democracy, then our elected representatives would have to vote based on the will of the majority of their constituency. While this probably happens most of the time because our elected officials' political philosophies tend to reflect the majority of their constituenies, I think you'll find plenty of cases where it doesn't happen. And there's no rule that says it must.
It's interesting to note, also, that the notion of the US as a democracy did not come into being until around the time of the Great Depression. Prior to that, nobody had any question regarding the type of government that we have.
Finally, I'll point out the dictionary definition of a republic: "A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law."
Thus, the voting citizens of the nation posess the supreme power and the executive and legislative branches are responsible to them.
-h-
Innocent people numbering in the millions.
It was brutal, it was ugly, it sure would have been nice if Japan had gone some other way in the 1930s, but there it was. Tens of thousands dying monthly due to their aggression; their own citizens at risk of starving; their government so corrupt that they insist it's better for their citizens to die than serve their country as productive adults.
There is no plausible scenario for ending that war that does not result in thousands of Japanese civilians dying. If not by being trapped in an invasion by both the US and the Soviet Union, then by starvation; if not by starvation, then being firebombed; if not by firebombs, then by atomic bombs.
You mean like making completely false statements concerning the casualties of the aggressor nation, compared to the casualties of the peoples it victimized?
I don't see how that - a complete and apparently intentional distortion of historical fact - is any less reprehensible than writing off the atomic bombings as unimportant.