Richard Rhodes

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

25th Anniversary Edition

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

The definitive history of nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project. From the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan, Richard Rhodes’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb.

This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence.

From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story.

Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work.

Sebastian Stockmarr

Szilard pursued one version or another of his Bund throughout his life. It appears as late as 1961, by then suitably disguised, in his popular story "The Voice of the Dolphins": a tankful of dolphins at a "Vienna Insti- tute" begin to impart their compelling wisdom to the world through their keepers and interpreters, who are U.S. and Russian scientists; the narrator slyly implies that the keepers may be the real source of wisdom, exploiting mankind's fascination with superhuman saviors to save it.

Szilard had already given a year of his life to the Army and two years to engineering. He wasted no time advancing through physics. In the summer of 1921 he went to Max von Laue and asked for a thesis topic. Von Laue apparently decided to challenge Szilardthe challenge may have been friendly or it may have been an attempt to put him in his place-and gave him an obscure problem in relativity theory. "I couldn't make any headway with it. As a matter of fact, I was not even convinced that this was a problem that could be solved." Szilard worked on it for six months, until the Christmas season, "and I thought Christmastime is not a time to work, it is a time to loaf, so I thought I would just think whatever comes to my mind." What he thought, in three weeks, was how to solve a baffling inconsistency in thermodynamics, the branch of physics that concerns relationships between heat and other forms of energy. There are two thermo- dynamic theories, both highly successful at predicting heat phenomena. One, the phenomenological, is more abstract and generalized (and therefore more useful); the other, the statistical, is based on an atomic model and corresponds more closely to physical reality. In particular, the statistical theory depicts thermal equi- librium as a state of random motion of atoms. Einstein, for example, had demonstrated in important papers in 1905 that Brownian motion-the continuous, random motion of particles such as pollen suspended in a liquid -was such a state, But the more useful phenomeno- logical theory treated thermal equilibrium as if it were static, a state of no change. That was the inconsistency. Szilard went for long walks-Berlin would have been cold and gray, the grayness sometimes relieved by days of brilliant sunshine"and I saw something in the middle of the walk; when I came home I wrote it down; next morning I woke up with a new idea and I went for another walk; this crystallized in my mind and in the eveningI wrote it down." It was, he thought, the most creative period of his life. "Within three weeks I had produced a manuscript of something which was really quite original. But I didn't dare to take it to von Laue, because it was not what he had asked me to do."

"It is a profound and necessary truth," Robert Oppenheimer would say, "that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them."

"Knowledge," Niels Bohr once noted, "is itself the basis for civilization." You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn't filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, not always welcome.

"Make it seem inevitable," Louis Pasteur used to advise his stu- dents when they prepared to write up their discoveries.

I can honestly say I understood only about half of this book. Absolute page turner nonetheless.

Mrigank

I always imagined physicist as awkward individuals holed up somewhere in seclusion where they could peer into the space time fabric in peace conjuring seemingly impossible formulas that has little relevance . This book has exposed me to the profoundness of their thoughts and the importance of physics on the modern world .

This is how history should be written. 
This book is not a monotonously bland narration of events that lead to the atomic bomb. It is about how an innocuous speculation of mere existence of nuclear energy under vile pressure of world war compelled the most brilliant minds of the era into creating the most destructive weapon in the human history. This book is more about the scientists, their discoveries and philosophies than about the bomb. Every facet from science to geopolitics has been aptly covered. A must read for every curious mind.

When I was writing a documentary about all things nuclear for the History Channel, I used this book at my primary reference. Fascinating stories and excellent reporting. 

Lee Schneider

Stefano Zorzi

1000 pages of 20th century history and physics. What can go wrong? If you also write it like a thriller, you have a masterpiece. Human nature for what it is. Able to collaborate across space and time to discover infinite energy.  But also willing to race, spy, conspire against each other to blow us all to ashes. Are you still reading this? Go read the book!

Spencer Tweedy

Twenty-five years after its initial publication, The Making of the Atomic Bomb remains the definitive history of nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project. From the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan, Richard Rhodes’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book details the science, the people, and the socio-political realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence. From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story. Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb 25th Anniversary Edition

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