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Title: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0-684-81378-5 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (103 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: NOT A BOHR AT ALL
Comment: The real message of this book seems to be escaping people, perhaps because there is no obvious excitement to it. Rhodes is quietly plugging the view of Niels Bohr that nationalism in the 20th century was starting to do more harm than good, and that the unleashing of the ultimate energy-source of the universe in the confines of one puny planet had finally brought the issue to a head. Compared with the other matters he covers -- the first discovery of alpha-particles and neutrons, the development and use of 'conventional' weapons of indiscriminate destruction, the Manhattan project and the use of the bombs over Japan to mention only the scientific issues, Bohr's philosophy is not the stuff of headlines. Churchill and Roosevelt missed its significance through their own arrogance, and even Oppenheimer got it a bit confused.
This book is a terrific read and don't let its length put you off, especially at the price. The history of science is engrossing, and so is the history of the 20th century in its clever/stupid way. The sheer brainpower assembled on the Manhattan project is awe-inspiring and the main players are depicted with balance and admirable restraint. Quite apart from the scientists, it is impossible not to see that even the charmless Gen Groves was an exceptionally gifted manager. The major political figures are only described selectively, and Churchill in particular is seen mainly at his worst. The antisemitism of the nazis is described with cold detachment, but one vignette that brought out for me the idiocy of the era was the picture of Hitler writing Mein Kampf in his prison cell 'boyish in lederhosen'. My thoughts turned directly, tangentially and scurrilously to P G Wodehouse's Spode (based on Mosley) of the Black Shorts Movement lookng a perfect perisher in his footer bags.
As an education, this book is a major event. As a readable account of of issues that we all ought to be informed about if we care for the future of our planet and our children it is unsurpassable. But back to Bohr -- I think I buy his analysis, namely that the nation-state is not such a permanent fixture as maybe a lot of us had thought, and indeed it had better not be. I think I see it fraying in different ways here and there, and on balance a good thing too.
Rating: 5
Summary: EXTREMELY interesting and well-written work!!!
Comment: Having read both the Making of Hydrogen Bomb and the Atom Bomb I have to say Richard Rhodes succeeded where most writers do not. He managed to write a history book that reads like a gripping novel! The book is extremely interesting and I thanked the author for its 700+ page length. The story is very well organized with plenty of explanations and forewords that make the book accessible to not just Physicits and Chemists but to the average readers as well.The stories are meticulously researched and it makes one wonder how it's possible to gather so much information and organize it so well. There is politics (and many things you'll never read about anywhere else), drama, human tragedy, and human persistence. Rhodes carefully and with great care and irony outlines the lives of dozens of scientists, from the early discoverers of the nucleus, to the discovery of its parts, to the discovery of radiaton, and all the way until its horrible implementation in the atom bomb. If you ever wondered why matter is the way it is, read this and you'll be enlightened. Truly one of the best books I ever read!
Rating: 5
Summary: Vade mecum to the modern age
Comment: For me, the most dramatic - and scariest - part of the whole book is probably on p. 275: "Enrico Fermi...was standing at his panoramic office window high in the physics tower [of Columbia University] looking down the gray winter length of Manhattan Island, its streets alive as always with vendors and taxis and crowds. He cupped his hands as if he were holding a ball. 'A little bomb like that,' he said simply, for once not lightly mocking, 'and it would all disappear.'"
This was one day in the winter of 1938/1939, probably in Jan or Feb of 1939. Fermi was of course referring to the atomic warhead yet to be invented. Fermi's estimates of the size of the fissile material required to produce such a devastating effect remain as true today in this post-911 age as then.
I entirely agree with Rhodes that the key personality in the whole saga was not Einstein or Oppenheimer or even Fermi but Niels Bohr, who was the godfather to modern nuclear physics, who was the guiding spirit if not a working technician at Los Alamos, and whose complementarity principle, originally devised to explain quantum mechanics, became applicable to the dilemma of the bomb itself. Rhodes's emphasis on Bohr's complementarity both surprises and impresses me.
If I'm allowed one criticism, it would be that a timeline of the major developments is missing.
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Title: Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0684824140 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 06 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project by Leslie R. Groves ISBN: 0306801892 Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: December, 1983 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb by Robert Serber, Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0520075765 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: March, 1992 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Brotherhood of the Bomb : The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller by Gregg Herken ISBN: 080506589X Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title:The Day After Trinity ASIN: B0000648XV Publisher: Image Entertainment Pub. Date: 14 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $21.74 |
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