The Making of the Atomic Bomb 25th Anniversary Edition

With a new Introduction by the author, the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic about how the atomic bomb came to be. In rich, human, political, and scientific detail, here is the complete story of the nuclear bomb. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftlyor 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 merely as 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 peersSzilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumannstepped 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 is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.

Richard Rhodes is the author of numerous books and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He graduated from Yale University and has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Contents

Part One: Profound and Necessary Truth

1. Moonshine

2. Atoms and Void

3. Tvi

4. The Long Grave Already Dug

5. Men from Mars

6. Machines

7. Exodus

8. Stirring and Digging

9. An Extensive Burst

Part Two: A Peculiar Sovereignty

10. Neutrons

11. Cross Sections

12. A Communication from Britain

13. The New World

14. Physics and Desert Country

15. Different Animals

16. Revelations

17. The Evils of This Time

Part Three: Life and Death

18. Trinity

19. Tongues of Fire

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index