And then we come to the dropping of the bomb - humanity’s darkest hour. The suffering it created is beyond imaginable. The total destruction was instantanious, destroyed lives, buildings, and every remnant of social structure that would enable rebirth. The book devotes a large section to eyewitness reports, which are horrifying. It was just death, even months later. Moreover, Wigner’s remark – “we are all doomed” – is thematically appropriate, because this is not simply a book about a scientific achievement, but about the terrible consequences of those achievements. You might be surprised to see a graphic novel on this list, but this must-read for anyone interested in this historical event. It is unlike any other book on this list as it shows, through words and illustrations, everything related to the atomic bomb. This includes the origins of the theory for it, the early work, and the Trinity Test. It then continues with the bombs being dropped on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the early Cold War that resulted from developing these weapons of mass destruction.

The book's weakest element is its occasional staccato rhythm. At times we jump from place to place, person to person, making discovery after discovery, and decision after decision with the only link being a temporal one. As if the research of Fermi in his lab in Rome and the decisions of Churchill at 10 Downing St can be juxtaposed simply because they happened on the same day. Magisterial is a word that I don't often find cause to use with the books I read. Here it is completely apt but then so is the word exhausting.

Discover the Key Moments of Each Year of World War II

It is a fascinating book which necessarily ends on a horrible note. The bomb was dropped. At the same time, I wonder, that if it was not dropped, would we have learned how dangerous it was? Bohr was right: having the bomb created an escalating nuclear arms race. But it also has stopped large-scale wars and bids for world domination via military means. We still have wars - but the nuclear arsenal is a deterrent of large wars. But how dangerous is it, achieving peace while sitting on a pile of destruction? The last third of the book described the Manhattan Project; not so much the project itself, but the realization in Great Britain and the United States, that it was necessary to develop an atomic bomb. It was known that Germany and Japan were working on the bomb, and if either country beat the Allies to its development, that would spell out a very bad ending to the war.

But at Hiroshima and Nagasaki the "city of the dead" is finally transformed from a metaphor into a literal reality.”

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The period of discovery from Rutherford discovering the atomic nucleus to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki could certainly be put forward as the greatest scientific period in human history. The community and fraternity of scientists across the globe preceding the Great Wars is also heartening and certainly a golden era I imagine all scientists wish we could return to. Another weakness of Rhodes is that his style unnecessarily difficult to follow. He gives quotes without attribution. He uses acronyms without defining them (I was sometimes able to deduce them from context, like HE - High Explosives). His sentence structure is often confusing - he likes to interrupt them with pairs of dashes. He'll use non-chronological narrative, and then specify dates without the year. He'll introduce a character briefly, and then not mention him until much later (lots of turning to the index to remind myself "who was that person?"). All this makes for slow and difficult reading. The book is very TMI about everything and everybody. The other factor is that the events he covers have largely faded from memory. I think it’s safe to say that it would not get published today. With such profound insights into the philosophy of science available, it is a shame that the author chose instead to grasp at lofty sentiments about the nature of war and weapons of mass destruction. Of course, in a book about the atom bomb, such discussions are obligatory, and it's logical for this to be the focus of the philosophical discussions in the book. But the position that the author chose to argue - specifically, Bohr's conviction that the surest guarantee of peace in a post-nuclear world would have been for the USA to share its knowledge with Russia - is frankly nonsensical, and in historical hindsight, mistaken. Bottom line: not recommended for pleasure reading, unless you really like physics, but not a horrible textbook.

In addition,there are details about the lives of the scientists who worked on the project,but those are not particularly compelling either. This may be the oldest book we have to offer from our list of a few of the best atomic bomb books out there. Brighter than a Thousand Suns was written during the 1950s and was published in 1970 by Robert Jungk. The author tells us an exciting story about the views and perspectives of different scientists and physicists who had some sort of part to play in and around the Manhattan Project. But I digress. Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" is a wonderful and exhaustingly detailed case study of the development of a transformative technology - the atomic bomb. The book is very thorough and covers the initial discoveries in nuclear physics, the early experiments, the government's intervention, the massive Manhattan project and its parallels in 4 other world powers, the associated secrecy, diplomacy, sabotage and espionage, and finally culminates with death and destruction at Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the associated political and ethical dilemmas. The latter portions of the book are dominated – unsurprisingly – by the “American Prometheus” himself, Oppenheimer. He was a brilliant man in his own right, but his main contribution to the Manhattan Project was to manage the greatest collection of scientific minds perhaps ever gathered in one place.The development of that theory was iterative. Many contributed to it. Rhodes does a wonderful job weaving together the contributions of different theorists working in different parts of the world. From New Zealand, to Japan, Hungary, Italy, Scandinavia, England, Germany and the US, scientists made discoveries and published their findings. Gradually, it became possible to understand critical features of the atom. A theory took shape. Some began to understand that the atom held enormous energy and that it might be possible to harness that energy. That insight inspired some scientists and terrified others. There were many people involved in this project. The books that we’re about to review include many names, events, secrets, and much more that may surprise you. The story is a broad one with many versions told by different people. However, this project wasn’t a secret for long and there is so much to discover about it after the time that has passed. Why Was the Manhattan Project Called That? Robert Oppenheimer oversaw all this activity with self-evident competence and an outward composure that almost everyone came to depend on. 'Oppenheimer was probably the best lab director I have ever seen,' Teller repeats, 'because of the great mobility of his mind, because of his successful effort to know about practically everything important invented in the laboratory, and also because of his unusual psychological insight into other people which, in the company of physicists, was very much the exception.'"

Different book in that it was mainly interviews and excerpts from other books, papers, published interviews, etc. They were compiled to tell the story of the Manhattan Project and the explain who the major players/contributors were. Atoms are made up of three particles, protons, neutrons, and electrons. At the atom’s core is the nucleus which contains the protons and neutrons. Electrons are found in orbitals or spheres around the nucleus. Protons carry a positive electrical charge, electrons carry a negative electrical charge and neutrons are electrically neutral. Breaking the bonds that hold the nucleus together, splitting the atom, through nuclear fission releases large quantities of energy. During nuclear fission, a neutron collides with a uranium atom and splits it. This collision releases energy in the form of heat and radiation and produces additional neutrons. These additional neutrons are available to collide with other uranium atoms, producing a nuclear chain reaction. It is almost impossible to do justice to this tome, so let me conclude by saying that the story includes awesome nuclear physics, science superheros, fanatical supervillans, massive factories appearing in the desert, political intrigue, British commandos on secret missions, explosions, oh and - it all actually happened. Great read, 5/5. Thanks to the story inside this book, its author, Richard Rhodes, received several amazing awards that are well-deserved. This list of prestigious awards includes the National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, Jason’s 5 Star, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. All of that praise is well-deserved as well. We have a book of similar topics somewhere within our Manhattan Project book review that talks about the women of Los Alamos. Even though the topics may be similar, this is still a different and very unique book. This one is a bit more in-depth and has much more to tell you regarding the women who were forced to live a life of difficulties and war hardship.

About the Author

MM: In 1995, the National Building Museum presented an exhibition revealing the impact of wartime building innovations on postwar American life. This catalogue includes passages touching on the cities built for the Manhattan Project. Categories