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The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.
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 yon 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 Fall of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.
If the first 270 pages of this book had been published separately, they would have made up a lively, insightful, beautifully written history of theoretical physics and the men and women who plumbed the mysteries of the atom. Along with the following 600 pages, they become a sweeping epic, filled with terror and pity, of the ultimate scientific quest: the development of the ultimate weapon. Rhodes is a peerless explainer of difficult concepts; he is even better at chronicling the personalities who made the discoveries that led to the Bomb. Niels Bohr dominates the first half of the book as J. Robert Oppenheimer does the second; both men were gifted philosophers of science as well as brilliant physicists. The central irony of this book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, is that the greatest minds of the century contributed to the greatest destructive force in history.
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150 Reviews
| From: Amazon Posted: Feb 25, 2008 Type: User Review |
The best on the subject
I am an amateur scholar of the Manhattan Project, its consequences and the weapons programmes of other nations. I have approx. 3 metres of book shelf space devoted these topics. This volume is Rhodes' masterwork, the best, most comprehensive book...
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 5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Feb 25, 2008 Type: User Review |
The Exhaustive Account...
The Manhatten Project's production of the first atomic bomb in time to end the war with Japan in 1945 is an intrinsically fascinating story with a long list of chroniclers. Richard Rhodes rightly earned a Pulitzer Prize for his exhaustive 1986...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Jan 23, 2008 Type: User Review |
The story of the atomic bomb from its theoretical origins to the Arms Race.
This book is impressive in more ways than its obvious thickness (886 pages). Exhaustively researched and well documented, its narrative is more characteristic of a novel than a scientific history. Notables such as historian Lawrence Badash and...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Jan 11, 2008 Type: User Review |
A MUST FOR ANY 20th CENTURY HISTORY STUDENT
Rhodes has made a stellar contribution to history by bringing scientific facts, personalities and events together in one highly-readable volume. The tale of the bomb development is traced through sixty years of parallel threads, culminating in the...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Jan 10, 2008 Type: User Review |
UNBELIEVABLY captivating...for a book on a scientific subject
I thought the book will just update my shaky and disparate knowledge on the subject which I have accumulated since high-school, university and other anecdotal sources - such as TV, newspapers, web, etc.
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 04, 2007 Type: User Review |
Good on Physics and Physists, simplistic on policy
This presents a first rate history of the physics, at the layman's level, and the physicists of the early 20th century. Sadly much of the 2nd half of the book is given over to the political implications and the aftermath of bombing Japan. The...
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 3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 25, 2007 Type: User Review |
An Epic Work
THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB(1986) is an epic work, covering the 45 years leading up to the first atomic bombs; and then, more briefly, the 10 years after, with the delivery of the first thermonuclear(hydrogen) bombs.
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 4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Aug 03, 2007 Type: User Review |
Is this the best non-fiction book ever written?
Read this one. It has that wonderful and rare convergence of a fantastic story, great science, and distinguished writing and storytelling. Richard Rhodes learned a lot for this, then distilled it down, synthesized the information, and made it...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Apr 21, 2007 Type: User Review |
From soup to nuts
I had been looking for a complete history of the making of the atomic bomb for many years. Imagine my pleasure at discovering this Pulitzer Prize winning tome on the budget rack at my local book store. Most books on this subject focus on only...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Mar 21, 2007 Type: User Review |
How do you define "Making"?
It's not what I thought it would be but I'm struggling to come up with a suitable title. "Fusion - Epiphany to Actuality - The Lead-Up to the Atomic Bomb" is about the best I can do. It should have stopped at the first critical mass.
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4.00/5 |
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