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The Making of the Atomic Bomb | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy Used: $5.32
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Avg. Customer Rating:  150 reviews
Sales Rank: 8402
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 928
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 0684813785
Dewey Decimal Number: 623.4511909
EAN: 9780684813783
ASIN: 0684813785
Publication Date: August 1, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: 4702; Softcover. Simon and Schuster. 1986. Some cover wear and edge tanning. Clean text.
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Amazon.com
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.
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 145 more reviews...
 The best on the subject February 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 on the subject. Pief Panofsky thought so, too.
This book makes an excellent basis for a college-level course on the history of the Bomb, or as reading for a course on WWII.
The Exhaustive Account... February 25, 2008
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 account, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Rhodes brings to life the scientific race and military gamble to win the Second World War, leaving an uncertain legacy for the future. This account stands out for his ability to provide insight into both the technical aspects of building a bomb and the psycological makeup of the men who built it.
Rhodes tackles the story in three parts. The first traces the scientific research prior to the Second World War that made the bomb feasible. The second part recounts the formation of the Manhatten Project and its industrial-scale effort to build a bomb for the Allies faster than its German and Japanese competitors. The final section addresses the military preparations to employ the atomic bomb and the political debate over its use. Throughout, Rhodes keeps the spotlight on the interaction of the many very fascinating people who played important roles in the creation of the bomb, from the intense intellectual rivalries of the scientists to the way Army General Leslie Groves bulldozed his way through wartime red tape and shortages to get the Manhatten Project first cut at the necessary and often exotic resources it needed.
Rhodes does not avoid the implications of the atomic bomb. The sheer ferocity of its destructive capability brought into question its utility in any but the most unlimited military conflict. This theme is more fully explored in Rhodes' two later works on this subject, but interested readers will find much to chew on in this volume.
This book is very highly recommended to students of the history of warfare and those interested in the mechanics of the nuclear weapon.
The story of the atomic bomb from its theoretical origins to the Arms Race. January 23, 2008
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 physicist Sir Solly Zuckerman praise the work for both its technical accuracy and readability, itself not an insignificant accomplishment and Rhodes was recognized by a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I traces the evolution of nuclear physics by scientists in Europe and describes the cultural climate in which they worked. Part II explains how and why research shifted to the United States and the Manhattan Project. Part III discusses the Trinity test, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the postwar development of the hydrogen bomb. A pervasive theme developed throughout the pages and discussed in an extensive epilogue, is the moral question of the bomb's destructive power.
The evolution of nuclear physics was the initiative of European physicists in Copenhagen, Guttenberg, and Cambridge. Marie Curie discovered radiation in 1898. Ernest Rutherford (considered the father of nuclear physics) in 1910 theorized the energy of the atom was in the nucleus. Neils Bohr explained the structure of the atom in 1922. Otto Hahn split the atom in 1938. The path of discovery wends its way through the politics of the first half of the twentieth century and the appearance of the "total-war machine"(779) when. in WWI, the mass annihilation of armies became possible by gas and the machine gun. As WWII neared, the basic science of the nuclear bomb was understood.
When scientists warned FDR of the danger of the enemy acquiring the atom bomb, the United States embarked on the Manhattan Project, the largest industrial and engineering project ever undertaken in the history of mankind. Meanwhile, on the war front, aerial bombing of cities caused massive civilians casualties. The "total-war machine" now included noncombatants. To force the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Government and avoid the costly toll of lives from invading Japan, Truman authorized the use of the atomic bombs. Two designs were used: Little Boy, a uranium gun design, was dropped on Hiroshima and Fat Man, an implosion bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki. America's nuclear monopoly was short lived. In 1949 the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb, Joe I.
The implications of nuclear weapons as a "total-death machine" (779) are discussed in an extensive epilogue extolling the virtue of Neils Bohr and his idea of an "open world." If nuclear power was available to everyone, Bohr argues, no one would have a monopoly. Consequently there would be no need for an arms race. Others, such as Oppeheimer called for a World Government organization to oversee nuclear power.
While scientists recognized the implications of their destructive work, there was no moral consensus to force the issue during WWII. A collective morality was finally articulated well after the conclusion of the war when scientists argued that the hydrogen bomb was a weapon of genocide.
A MUST FOR ANY 20th CENTURY HISTORY STUDENT January 11, 2008
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 final 2-year effort at Los Alamos. Rhodes has done a fabulous job of writing a book that pulls the reader to the last page.
Everyone should enjoy the tale. Historians should not fear this book: as I recall, the mathematics doesn't go deeper than e=mc2. Techies will find the giants of early 20th-century science to be readily accessible personalities. Mystery buffs will enjoy the telling - investigators follow clues, and small teasers are dropped in the readers' path to presage future events. The curious will find themselves informed.
In short, this book is what a National Book Award winner should be: absorbing, readable and informative.
 Good on Physics and Physists, simplistic on policy December 4, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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 first is simplistic and ideological, the second is hackneyed.
E.g, Rhodes takes it as revealed wisdom, that the U.S. should have published all the technology developed in the Manhattan project, and thereby avoided the Cold War. There is a (tenuous, to my mind) case to be made for that view, but Rhodes simply puts in the mouths of a couple of physicists as if it requires no further thought. "Our physicists want to share with the Russians, so we'll just give Stalin the bomb. He's not so bad."
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