The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition
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.
Reviews (176)
Flawed Masterpiece
A quick note for anyone deciding which edition to buy: The "25th Anniversary Edition" removes the book's final chapter completely, which feels utterly disingenuous and revisionist to me. While Rhodes' "Dark Sun" covers the same ground as the omitted epilogue, this edition ends so abruptly I'm amazed there wasn't an advertisement for the other books in his "nuclear anthology" on the final page. The Kindle version is somewhat flawed; there are quite a few typos and dropped punctuation, and it's not always obvious when direct quotations begin and end. I'd recommend buying one of the older physical editions if you want to read this book as it was meant to be read. "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" is a richly detailed epic, a table-shaking beast of a book that frequently sent me on evening walks to ponder and process the last few chapters I'd read. This is more than just a book about Hiroshima, Oppenheimer, and the Manhattan Project. We get an in-depth look at the early history of atomic physics, the personalities of key scientists, politicians, and military leaders, the complex political and military issues surrounding the bomb's development and use, and the historic and social events that shaped its creation. This is NOT a beach read - better put aside two weeks and plenty of undivided attention before tackling it! I first read this book back in 2001, and I was totally enthralled by it, devouring it from cover to cover in four days. Having read it four times since then, some cracks have formed in its facade. Namely, it feels like two books grafted together - a decent one on the early history of nuclear physics, and an enthralling one on the actual making of the atomic bomb. The first 250 pages, while perhaps essential, tend to get bogged down by Rhodes' occasionally self-indulgent scene-setting (do we really need to know what shape the windows were?) and somewhat heavy philosophizing. Things pick up immensely with the actual discovery that the Uranium atom can be split, but I can see why some people give up early on. The "making of" is told with a remarkable lack of sensationalizing and sermonizing, and as horrific as the accounts of the actual bombings are, Rhodes is remarkably nonjudgmental about the bomb's use. People looking for pointed criticisms or historical revisionism will probably be disappointed; although Rhodes clearly abhors war, he seems to view Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the inevitable climax of an increasingly savage conflict against an enemy which refused to surrender. Considering how emotionally charged most books on nuclear weapons are, I actually admired Rhodes' somewhat pragmatic approach. Then again, it might leave others cold and confused. Although it's not the flawless masterpiece I once held it as, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" is still a pretty solid tome. It's big, multi-layered, thought-provoking, darkly funny, disturbing, richly detailed, philosophical... and just a tad over-rated. The first third is somewhat rough going, and, in retrospect, could have used some careful editing. The last 500 pages, however, are among the best history writing I've ever read. If the early history of nuclear weapons and nuclear physics fascinates you, give it a shot. You just need some patience going in.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb – Richard Rhodes Title ...
The Making of the Atomic Bomb – Richard Rhodes Title: Scientifically Accurate – Overly Wordy Richard Rhodes tome deserves its acclaim as the most comprehensive history of the development of the atomic bomb. As a scientist with advanced degrees in quantum physics I can attest to its scientific accuracy. Mr. Rhodes’s has a gift for explaining complex technical details to a lay audience. I found his lengthily discourse on the lives of scientists enlightening but non-scientists might find these sidebars distracting. There is one question on the development of atomic weapons that has haunted me. What would have happened if Otto Hahn’s paper on the discovery of nuclear fission had not been published six months before the Nazi invasion of Poland? Would the major powers have invested so much talent and money on the urgent development of an atomic bomb? It is unlikely this question will ever be answered
The definitive tale of the most important single piece of science and history of the 20th century -- not to be missed.
The story of the building of the atomic bomb is probably the single most important piece of science and history of the 20th century and perhaps all of human history. The atomic bomb gave humanity a weapon by which it could achieve its own destruction, something unparalleled in history. Since the test at Trinity in 1945, the entire world has lived in the shadow of annihilation by mass suicide. Now, as nuclear proliferation becomes a greater reality than ever, the threat of superpowers destroying each other in a geopolitical contest has been replaced by the idea of ideological dictators (like North Korea) or terrorist organizations (like ISIS) destroying cities and nations, and in so doing, becoming the cause of such a world-ending world war. But how the atomic bomb was created is a story that many people do not know, and in itself, is a rich and fascinating tale. It combines basic scientific curiosity with the terrible geopolitics of the 1930s, the horrifying tableaux of the world's ghastliest war in the 1940s, the backdrop of Nazi racism, the incredible engineering power of the United States' economy and its military establishment, the growing paranoia and fears of the burgeoning Cold War, and some of the most interesting and intriguing characters in scientific, political, and military history...familiar names like Einstein and Fermi, somewhat less familiar names like Oppenheimer, Groves, and Bohr, and people who should be better remembered, like Kistiakowsky, Feynman, and Alvarez. The scientific and engineering struggle to create the world's first "atomic device" is told with immense writing ability, great research, and rich detail -- an entire chapter focuses on anti-Semitism and how it worked in Europe, hindering Hitler's plans to build an atomic bomb and aiding America's. Later chapters depict in detail the engineering and scientific processes to create atomic piles, nuclear reactors, and finally, "The Gadget," to its first test on July 16, 1945. After that, the pace continues to quicken, as "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" make well-documented voyages to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, and the atomic attacks are rendered from both points of view: American and Japanese -- victory and the shortening of the war for the Americans, an unbelievable horror for the Japanese. At the end, one feels cognizant of Albert Einstein's warnings about how nuclear weaponry would lead to "general annihilation." This is a book that will fascinate, educate, and make you aware of the ghastly reality we face: we must live together as a species or die by mutual suicide.
A Timeless Read Updated
I first read this book when it was originally published. I loaned it to a number of friends over the years so many times that a few years ago I bought a new physical copy. I decided to re-read in hard copy but I've been on a Kindle so long I gave up after a chapter and bought the Kindle version that is an updated book. I had forgotten how inept most of the government officials were that were put in charge of various parts of the Manhattan Project. Most people look back at the US WWII effort with rose colored glasses thinking that we had these omniscient people that guided us to victory. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We were just damn lucky that some brilliant civilians never gave up and overcame the impediments of people like Lyman Briggs, Jimmy Byrnes and other pols. It was much the same in the military. If you start with Rick Atkinson's trilogy about the war and then dig deeper, you'll see that the main reasons we won were our industrial production capacity and the GI's who fought bravely. While the generals who were venerated largely turned out to be a bunch inept knuckleheads who were more worried about their image and settling petty scores with other generals. The background of how a largely Jewish group of Europeans were driven into our laps by anti Semitism is fascinating. Moreover, it paints a picture with disturbing parallels to today's nationalism, racism and intolerance stoked by Trump, Bannon, Miller and others.
A thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating book about the advent of the nuclear age.
“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is Richard Rhodes’s altogether masterful history of the advent of the nuclear age. This book won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. It is highly deserving of this award. I found many things most impressive about “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” It takes a comprehensive look at not only the two years leading up to the “Trinity” test at Alamogordo, New Mexico and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also traces the history of nuclear science back to the late nineteenth century when many of the most important foundational discoveries in the fields of physics and chemistry were made. Rhodes highlights the works of many of the most prominent scientists of the age, including Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, James Chadwick, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and others. Most of these scientists won Nobel Prizes in Physics or Chemistry for their discoveries. Rhodes includes plenty of science in this book, but he does so in a manner that most readers will understand with little difficulty. (On occasion, it does help for readers to have some familiarity with some concepts of physics and chemistry.) However, ‘The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is obviously intended for anyone generally interested in science, history, and biography. “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” Is a long book, weighing in at nearly 900 pages (including end notes, bibliography, and index.) However, Richard Rhodes writes in such a clear, precise, and engaging style that I was able to finish it in only ten days. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating read. Highly recommended.
The saviors of WWII
This is a truly fascinating journey from the identification of different components of the atom to the world changing creation and use of the atomic bomb to end WWII. This demonstrates in the strongest possible terms the importance of man's mind and its capabilities. The scientists described are truly heroic and the author describes the progression of events in an exciting and clear manner. It was amazing to me that all of these scientific discoveries coincided with a time when evil men like Hitler and Mussolini were rising to power. It is also unbelievable how rudimentary the experiments were considering the precision required to detect what they were trying to prove. This demonstrates how strong their theoretical aptitude had to be. It is unfortunate that some of the scientists had such reservations regarding the morality of dropping the bomb. It was an either/ or situation and dropping the bomb saved tens of thousands of lives who were fighting for the proper side...fighting for freedom against the evil forces of totalitarianism, collectivism and racism. The biographical portions of this book alone are well worth read- from Einstein to Bohr to Oppenheimer. Rhodes does a great job explaining highly technical subjects that allows the reader to understand the basics behind the monumental discoveries that were occurring. He also colorfully describes the various characters involved in the discoveries. It is difficult to think of a subject with more gravity than the creation of the atomic bomb and the subsequent conclusion of WWII and the author definitely does justice to the subject. Highly recommend!
Detailed and Well Done
This was a hard read for a preacher. There was a lot of science and math, but that author does an excellent job of making it understandable. The book is dense and long but goes into needed detail about the background and some of the major players in this pursuit. The book starts from the beginning in talking about some of the early experiments and the famous letter from Einstein to the President. You have Oppenheimer and Teller. In reading the book, you are amazed what was accomplished really in a short amount of time. You are also impressed with the amount of power that the bomb created, but even more about what humans can do today in power. The old bombs are like a firecracker compared to the power of the bombs today. The end of the book is super sad. Hearing all of the eyewitness accounts of the suffering broke my heart. It is my prayer that humanity never drops another bomb. This is a book full of details, it is long and packed full of stuff about the Atomic bomb, and you have to be pretty motived to finish it, but it is the classic text on the topic.
History, physics, and human nature behind The Bomb
When I bought this book I expected to read a dry account of the activities at Fermi Labs and at Los Alamos resulting in the development of Little Boy. I was greatly surprised. The author covers, beginning at the end of the 19th century, with amazing technical understanding and clarity not only the radiochemistry and physics leading to the assembly of the first bomb, he takes the reader into the lives of the cast of characters involved in those developments. We are invited into the saga that involves the personality quirks of some of the giants of nuclear physics in the 20th century, and we can’t help but be awed by their brilliance and their perseverance in pursuit of their science. The upheaval events of WWII that caused the exodus of so many Jewish scientists to the West not only changed the course of the war, but it changed the tilt of intellectual power to the United States for years to come. If you want a rich chronicle of the events of the first half of the 20th century and its cast of characters leading to the development of the most powerful weapon on earth, this is your book. If you are looking for a short treatise on the last stages of the assembly of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in the 1940s, look elsewhere. Love this book!
Highly recommended
It's a fascinating, long, and detailed history from before WWI until the end of WWII of the science, the scientists, the chance events and brilliant discoveries that ushered in the new field of nuclear physics, and that eventually led to the race to make a super-bomb before the Axis powers succeeded in doing so. It reads like a novel, a thriller, a horror story; sad, funny, inspirational and heartbreaking. Many characters we already know (Einstein, Bohr, Fermi) but many of the most historically influential in this narrative are unknown to most (like the first guy to conceive of the notion of a chain reaction, who then later worked so hard to prevent the creation and use of an atomic weapon). There are very detailed descriptions of the scientific techniques used at the time, revealing the painstaking detective work of those dedicated to the research. This contrasts with the political and military figures who, once they understood the implications and learned that other nations were also on the path, pushed for a practical implementation of the theory with extreme urgency. At the end is a gut wrenching account of the first days and the aftermath of the birth of the nuclear age. Highly recommended.
Still the definitive history; exhaustive, epic and utterly gripping
When this book was published 25 years ago it was immediately recognized as a true classic, a history that was unlikely to be ever surpassed for the sheer amount of detail in it, the amazing breadth of the narrative and the spellbinding language and almost epic style that Rhodes brought in describing an earth-shattering event in human history. 25 years later this fact still rings true and it is inconceivable that anything of this caliber can ever be written. The new anniversary edition has a poignant foreword by Rhodes in which he traces the history of the book, examines our nuclear world and makes a heartfelt and yet commonsense plea for the ultimate abolition of these weapons of mass destruction. There are three things about the book which make it a timeless classic. The first is the sheer, staggering amount of meticulous research and attention to detail that Rhodes brings to his narrative. One simply marvels at the wealth of sources he must have plumbed and the time he must have spent in making sense of them, the mountains of material he must have assimilated and sorted and the number of people he must have interviewed. This book stands as a model of exhaustive research on any topic. A related aspect is the immense breadth and sweep of events, people and places that Rhodes covers. He paints on a canvas that's expansive enough to accommodate everything from quantum mechanics to the human psyche. In this book he doesn't just give us the details of the first atomic bombs but also holds forth on, among other things: the fascinating political and military personalities of the era (FDR, Truman, LeMay), a history of physics in the first half of the twentieth century, ruminations on war and peace including accounts and interpretations of key events during both World Wars, an account of anti-Semitism in Europe, the beginnings of "Big Science" in the United States, the psychological aspects of scientific personality, the moral calculus of bombing, the political history of Europe between the wars and the detailed engineering that went into building weapons of war. There are sections on each of these topics and more, and even the digressions are deep and riveting enough to temporarily immerse the reader into an alternative topic (for instance, a six page account on Jewish history and persecution transports the reader). Long paragraphs of direct quotation allow the characters to speak in their own words. What is remarkable is that Rhodes makes the material utterly gripping in spite of the extraordinarily broad coverage and the level of detail and holds the reader's attention from beginning to end through an 800 page work. This is an achievement in itself. The second aspect of this book that makes it such a fantastic read is the elegant, clear explanation of the science. It is no easy feat to describe the work of Rutherford and Oppenheimer on nuclear physics while at the same time dissecting the political manipulations of Churchill and Roosevelt. Yet Rhodes accomplishes a beautifully simplified (but not oversimplified) version of the momentous scientific ideas developed during the early twentieth century. He seems to have read the original papers on the neutron, radioactive transformations and nuclear fission and these sources are thoroughly documented in the extensive bibliography; key experiments and theories unravel into clear explanations supported by quotes from the original participants. In fact the first half of the book would be a first-rate introduction to the development of atomic physics and the life and times of brilliant scientists like Fermi, Heisenberg, Rutherford, Bohr, Chadwick, Einstein and the Curies who contributed to this discipline. These remarkable scientists are really at the center of Rhodes's account and their personalities and work come alive under his pen. This was physics during its most glorious age of discovery and nobody knew just how enormously it would impact politics and society; indeed, one of Rhodes's goals is to demonstrate how even the purest of science can have the most far-reaching practical and social ramifications. The work of all these scientists is set in revealing detail against the backdrop of growing anti-Semitism and political turmoil in Europe, and their subsequent emigration to the United States and England constitutes a very important chapter in this story. But the introduction of nuclear energy was primarily an act of science, and Rhodes excels in describing this science in patient and marvelous detail. Finally, what ensures this book's place in history is Rhodes's mesmerizing prose, of the kind employed by the select few historians and novelists like Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Herodotus who opened our eyes to world-changing historical events and to the human condition. In Rhodes's hands the making of the atomic bomb turns into an epic tale of triumph and tragedy akin to the Greek tragedies or the Mahabharata. He brings a novelist's eye to his characters and portrays them as actors in a heroic drama of victory and woe; a great example is the unforgettable opening paragraph of the book in which the physicist Leo Szilard first thinks of a chain reaction while waiting for a traffic light in London. The leading lights of the narrative are Niels Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer, brilliant men who also saw deep into the future. And there are many others, human beings laid bare in all their glorious folly, frailty and greatness, struggling to comprehend both natural and human forces. There are no saints and sinners here, only complex humans struggling to understand and control forces that are sometimes beyond their immediate comprehension, often with unintended consequences. Rhodes relentlessly drives home the point that man's greatest gifts can also be the cause of his greatest evils. He makes it clear that science, politics and human nature are inextricably linked and you cannot perturb one without perturbing the other. Taming this combustible mix will be a struggle that we will always grapple with. I first read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" about fifteen years ago and consider it the most influential book I have ever come across. I am a scientist and the book completely changed my understanding of the inextricable relationship between science and society. Since then at any given moment I have about three copies of the book on my shelf, ready to be lent or gifted to anyone I feel might be interested. I consider it one of the best chronicles ever written about what human beings are capable of, both as creators and destroyers. In the making of the atomic bomb are lessons for all of humanity.
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