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 Von Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight. source
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What Hacker News says
- A more reliable account is "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes.
- Concur entirely. After reading _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ (highly recommended, BTW) you know the steps to make a U-235 enriched atomic bomb. The difficulty comes from obtaining the enriched uranium.
- I agree so strongly that I moved it from my 'to buy' list to bought.
Also of note is Wellerstein's more recent 'The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age – The Anti-Nuclear President, the Bomb Decision, and Cold War History', which I read earlier this year and thought it was excellent.
A clipping from its closing pages:
> “What is the measure of a civilized man?” The proper answer, Lilienthal suggested, was to consider the sense that a “civilized man” was one who believed they had a responsibility to others. The invention of nuclear weapons had clearly magnified the problem: “One sees that the mark of a civilized man must be some quality that will help the world from destroying itself. He is most civilized who has those qualities and talents of leadership, by example and precept and character and ideas, that will help civilization to survive.”
To extend the reading list, I was completely floored by 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes, but that was 20 years ago. I need to re-read it, and add 'Dark Sun' and 'American Prometheus' to round out that part of my picture of the military-industrial complex.
- "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes is a particularly engaging read. Rhodes manages to record history as a character-driven story without sacrificing detailed elements of physical chemistry and - at times - philosophy. His treatment of Szilard and Bohr is outstanding.
I also recently finished "A Cage Went in Search of a Bird", which is an anthology of Kafka-esque short stories. I'd recommend it if only for reading "God's Doorbell" (which imagines swarm-behavior RSI building the Tower of Babel).
- See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes.
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...
Also, the Apollo lunar landing. 400,000 people worked on it.
- This AI has a good taste for books. From the AI proposed books I highly recommend "Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, published in 1986. It's a history book but reads much like a novel.
