The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly - or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers-Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon Neumann-stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been compared in its sweep and importance to William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.

Richard Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-two books, the most recent of which is The Twilight of the Bomb, the fourth and final installment of a four-volume series on nuclear history. The Creation of the Atomic Bomb earned the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award in its initial edition. He has earned multiple research and writing fellowships from organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Sloan Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing He has worked as a host and correspondent for films on public television's Frontline and American Experience programs, as well as a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT. He is a frequent lecturer in the United States and internationally, and is a member of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.