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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.