Making Of The Atomic Bomb » (Reprint)

Richard Rhodes is a widely published author. His articles have appeared in numerous national magazines. He graduated from Yale University and has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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.

Publishers Weekly

This winner of the NBCC, NBA and Pulitzer prizes is being published to coincide with the 50th anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the hardcover publication of Rhodes's new book, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.

Part One: Profound and Necessary Truth

1. Moonshine

2. Atoms and Void

3. Tvi

4. The Long Grave Already Dug

5. Men from Mars

6. Machines

7. Exodus

8. Stirring and Digging

9. An Extensive Burst

Part Two: A Peculiar Sovereignty

10. Neutrons

11. Cross Sections

12. A Communication from Britain

13. The New World

14. Physics and Desert Country

15. Different Animals

16. Revelations

17. The Evils of This Time

Part Three: Life and Death

18. Trinity

19. Tongues of Fire

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index