The Making of the Atomic Bomb

**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award**

The definitive history of nuclear weapons—from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb.

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.

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