| The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Author Richard Rhodes
Country United States
Language English
Subject(s) Manhattan Project
Publisher Simon and Schuster
Publication date 1986
Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages 886 (hc)
ISBN 0671441337
OCLC Number 231117096
Dewey Decimal 623.4/5119/09 19
LC Classification QC773 .R46 1986
Followed by Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb
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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.
From Publishers Weekly
The breadth and scope of this gripping narrative is almost as impressive as the story itself. Rhodes ( Looking for America describes the theoretical origins of the bomb, the lab experiments, the building of the prototype, the test at Alamagordo, the training of the B-29 crews assigned to deliver the first two combat bombs and the missions themselves. There's much more. Rhodes, gifted with sharp psychological insight and a novelist's ability to convey character, reveals the personalities and emotional dynamics among Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Ernest Lawrence, Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves, Colonel Paul Tibbets and others responsible for conceiving, engineering, testing and ultimately dropping the apocalyptic devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition he describes the struggle in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to make the first bomb, as well as the political and military events that led inexorably to the destruction of the Japanese cities. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative book on the subject to date.
This book won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
[MP3/64]
Courtesy: ggallen
Total runtime 35:52:04
Narrated by Grover Gardner
Originally picked up from a torrent by Visible @ bitme.org |
