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[Cyan]

Boom!


The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly—or have been so misunderstood.

Richard Rhodes gives the definitive story of man’s most awesome discovery and invention. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a narrative tour de force and a document with literary power commensurate with its subject.

"A great book. Mr. Rhodes has done a beautiful job, and I don't see how anyone can ever top it."
-Alvarez

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb strikes me as the most complete account of the Manhattan Project to date."
-Seaborg

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb is an epic worthy of Milton. Nowhere else have I seen the whole story put down with such elegance and gusto and in such revealing detail..."
-Rabi

Spoiler

If you don't recognize the names, go to the Nobel Prize website and look them up!

Find it here:
Kindle edition
Paperback edition

Or try your local library. It's a Pulitzer Prize-winner, it's probably there. Let's read!

Guidelines:
-Discussion of anything and everything is encouraged. It's a book club, let's chat!
-Please use spoiler tags sensibly. It's nonfiction, hopefully we all know how it ends.
-The milestones are there to help keep you on the path. If you get ahead or behind, don't worry--it will have no impact on your final grade.


Reading Milestones:
One month to read this monster? lol no
Apr 13 || Chapter 1-4
Apr 14-21 || Chapter 5-7
Apr 22-27 || Chapter 8-9
Apr 28-May 4 || Chapter 10-12
May 5-11 || Chapter 13-14
May 12-18 || Chapter 15-17
May 19-25 || Chapter 18-End


Previous Book Club Threads:
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (Mar 2014)
Blindness by José Saramago (Feb 2014)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (Jan 2014)
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Sept 2013)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (July 2013)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Feb-Mar 2013)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (September 2012)
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (January 2012)
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (December 2011)
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy (Oct 2011)
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (Sep 2011)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (Aug 2011)
Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian (July 2011)
The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin (June 2011)
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (May 2011)
The Afghan Campaign, by Steven Pressfield (Apr 2011)
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein (Mar 2011)
Flashman, by George MacDonald Fraser (Feb 2011)

 

[RatskyWatsky]

Cool, another GAF Book Club book that my library doesn't have! See you (maybe) next month!

 

[Haly]

Your enthusiasm for weapons of mass destruction borders on the manic.

 

[Jintor]

Read it last month early by accident. IT'S GOOD. READ IT

I'mma go buy a physical copy cos looking stuff up is hard on kindle

 

[v1lla21]

I bought this book back in 10th grade because I was working on an essay that focused on the atomic bomb. I never finished the essay but I did get through the book.

 

[Cyan]

Cool, another GAF Book Club book that my library doesn't have! See you (maybe) next month!

Damn it Ratsky! You are doing this on purpose.

Your enthusiasm for weapons of mass destruction borders on the manic.

I... don't know what you mean. *shifty eyes*

 

[Teptom]

There's only one copy in the entirety of my library system. Luckily, it's at the branch I work at.

 

[Pau]

I'm down for this one.

 

[Empty]

i might be up for this. i haven't read much real non-fiction in a bit and it sounds like a significant book. it's quite long and pricey though.

for those who have read it or know the book: how science based is it is it vs how much is it about the ethics of the project. also how easy is the science to understand for someone like me who hasn't studied any in six-seven years and wasn't good at understanding it when i did. i'm willing to make an effort but will i get overwhelmed?

 

[Barmaley]

This one sounds great! Sadly I'm still stuck on Bros Karamazov and Blindness
I wish I had more time for reading.

 

[Necrovex]

900 pages?! Cyan, you ain't making this 50 books challenge an easy feat.

 

[The Culture Vulture]

I read Cat's Cradle already. Close enough?

 

[Cyan]

i might be up for this. i haven't read much real non-fiction in a bit and it sounds like a significant book. it's quite long and pricey though.

for those who have read it or know the book: how science based is it is it vs how much is it about the ethics of the project. also how easy is the science to understand for someone like me who hasn't studied any in six-seven years and wasn't good at understanding it when i did. i'm willing to make an effort but will i get overwhelmed?

I haven't read it yet, of course, but I would expect the science to be explained such that most people can understand it. It will be more about the people behind the project.

This one sounds great! Sadly I'm still stuck on Bros Karamazov and Blindness
I wish I had more time for reading.

I still haven't finished Blindness. Mostly, I think, because I keep being afraid to keep reading. :/

900 pages?! Cyan, you ain't making this 50 books challenge an easy feat.

That's why they call it a challenge!

I read Cat's Cradle already. Close enough?

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land
Man got to tell himself he understand

Spoiler

No.

 

[Necrovex]

That's why they call it a challenge!

You're going to cause another repeat for April (reading time>video game time). You're transforming me into a literature monster!

 

[Jintor]

You're going to cause another repeat for April (reading time>video game time). You're transforming me into a literature monster!

good!

i might be up for this. i haven't read much real non-fiction in a bit and it sounds like a significant book. it's quite long and pricey though.

for those who have read it or know the book: how science based is it is it vs how much is it about the ethics of the project. also how easy is the science to understand for someone like me who hasn't studied any in six-seven years and wasn't good at understanding it when i did. i'm willing to make an effort but will i get overwhelmed?

If you have a basic physics understanding (neutrons, atoms, nuclear forces, etc) you should be able to keep up. There's some stuff that gets pretty complex and technical which made my eyes glaze over but the foundation of the book really is the people and the politics and the progress of pre-war/post-war stuff so you don't need to be well versed

 

[Cyan]

Awright, time to blow stuff up! I mean... start reading.

 

[Ashes]

A thousand pages!

 

[Necrovex]

I'm horrified to read this. I'll probably skim-read the book when it hits the technical parts. I know next-to-nothing about physics! Never took a class in it.

 

[Cyan]

Who else is reading? I'm a little behind already. Busy week, and it's a long book! Hope to catch up today and tomorrow.

 

[EverythingShiny]

I just ordered my copy and it arrives on Wednesday, so I'll have some catching up to do. Really looking forward to reading this, sounds amazing.

 

[Lumiere]

I grabbed this when it was a Kindle Daily Deal a couple of months ago and do plan on reading it, but I'm currently going through a big backlog of library books that need to be returned soon-ish due to some poor planning of my holds.

Hope I can get to it soon! The size a bit intimidating but I've always been interested in the subject.

 

[Cyan]

Reading Milestones:
I'm up for it if you guys are. One month to read this monster? Let's make it happen, GAF!
Apr 1-6 || Chapter 1-7
Apr 7-13 || Chapter 8-12
Apr 14-21 || Chapter 13-17
Apr 22-27 || Chapter 18-End

Look at this. Look at it. So much fucking hubris.

I admit it. I overestimated how much reading I could get done, and underestimated just how dense this book is.

I'm changing this to a two-month book club. Updated benchmarks later tonight or tomorrow morning.

May God have mercy on our souls.

 

[Haly]

hubris.

I see what you did there.

 

[cashman]

This is great news because I just put in order in for this book!

 

[Cyan]

I see what you did there.

I... don't know what you mean. *shifty eyes*

Anyway, just finished the chapter on WWI gas warfare. Really interesting how closely the arguments in favor of poison gas resemble the later arguments for firebombs and atom bombs, as I recall them from the Hardcore History episode on the atomic bomb.

I actually wrote a paper on Fritz Haber (and Vannevar Bush) for a history of science class back in college. I remembered from that paper that he was key to Germany's efforts with poison gas and that he bought into patriotism and so on, but I'd forgotten the detail of his wife's suicide when she couldn't convince him to stop creating poison gas.

What a world.

 

[Ashes]

I'm up for it if you guys are. One month to read this monster? Let's make it happen, GAF!

Have your senses forsaken you?

May 19-25 || Chapter 18-End

They haven't. Phew.

Spoiler

I'll probably start reading by May the first.

 

[Cyan]

Oh, forgot to change that bit. Thanks, Ashes.

 

[Empty]

just noticed the two month switch. think i'm going to join in now.

 

[Dresden]

Book arrived, will catch up.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Oh shit, I read this book once long ago. I'll need to borrow it from my father.

 

[Empty]

starting slowly, but read a few chapters this week.

i guess i figured this book would be about the manhattan project, but it's so sprawling and takes you back into the history of physics and how the ideas at the core of our understanding of nuclear physics were discovered. it's pretty interesting seeing how the work of major scientists across europe interrelates (america has been quiet in what i've read so far, which is amusing given who led the manhattan project) and learning about the philosophy of each major figure (bohr seems like an interesting guy). i think it might help that i'm disgustingly ignorant of scientific history so a lot of this stuff feels new to me. i'm not totally able to visualize every experiment, but i've found the science okay to understand so far, my memory of the diagrams at school showing protons, electrons and neutrons is holding me through.

this is also the most footnooted book i've ever read. makes you appreciate the sheer weight of research that must have gone into it.

 

[Haly]

So I'm up to the part where Fermi conducts the first instance of controlled nuclear fission in Chicago, and all I can think about is how drastically this moment would've been dramatized in a film adaptation. Glowing lights, cracking electricity, and, over the roar of multiplying neutrons, Fermi (possibly played by Bruce Willis) yelling at Weil to drop the ZIP and halt the reaction.

What a nerd:

Enrico and I went to the reactor building . . . to watch the loading. The slugs were brought to the floor in solid wooden blocks in which holes were drilled, each of a size to contain a slug, and the wooden blocks were stacked much as had been the slug-containing graphite bricks in CP-1. Idly I teased Fermi saying it looked like a chain-reacting pile. Fermi turned white , gasped, and reached for his slide rule. But after a couple of seconds he relaxed, realizing that under no circumstances could natural uranium and natural wood in any configuration cause a chain reaction.

I can't tell who I like more, Bohr or Fermi. Bohr is some sort of crazy prophet, but Fermi is more fun to watch.

 

[Cyan]

How's the reading going, cool cats? I just finished Part 2, so I'm still a tiny bit behind.

I keep thinking, while reading the revelations going off in physics like firecrackers, about how funny it is that this seems so obvious to us since we've always been taught it. Like, if a high school graduate (who paid attention in class) were popped back in time to the 1920s, they could give the physicists so many leads.

The fission story was pretty remarkable. I guess it never occurred to me just how tricky it would be to figure out what elements you were looking at when you weren't entirely sure what to expect. The water drop metaphor is great, and I love the Bohr story where he accidentally lets the whole thing slip to basically everyone in America.

Exciting stuff!

 

[Haly]

I'm in "Part 3" but only 60% of the way through.

I can't believe I'm barely over half done with this book. Legitimately longer than Dark Souls 2.

 

[Haly]

I hate to double post but this thread needs an injection of life, much like the nuclear program before Los Alamos.

So, finished this today. I was a bit surprised, because given the size of the book (by my Kindle's reckoning) I was only 70% done. Afterwards I realized 30% of the Kindle edition is pictures, footnotes and other secondary material, which is truly impressive. I had expected the book to delve into the aftermath of the bomb, and the ensuing Cold War, so I felt like ending on Nagasaki wasted some of the book's potential. As it is, the finale is rather weak, especially when compared to the buildup to the first nuclear pile. It just sort of meanders off into nowhere.

I'm, however, glad the book didn't gloss over the destruction of Hiroshima. Those eyewitness accounts were very evocative, although oddly detached. I guess it's difficult to genuinely convey the horror of the situation across a language barrier (Japanese to English), a culture barrier (Japan to America), and a temporal barrier (50s to 2010s), much like how reading about the Holocaust in high school never engendered strong emotions in me.

In conclusion, great beginning and middle with a somewhat disappointing ending that has left me kind of ambivalent about the whole thing due to recency bias. I'll say one thing about it, though. If I had read this monstrosity during my formative years, I would've very likely gone into physics or chemistry. Definitely a book that can define a life, at the right place and time.

 

[Cyan]

Any stragglers? We're finally approaching the end! And I'm actually on track to finish this weekend. Woo!

Since TolkienGAF just launched a Silmarillion read-through, I'll probably defer on having a book club next month.

 

[Empty]

ugh i'm so far behind. i'm right near the end of part 1. still. been really struggling with my reading recently and i'm disappointed i couldn't contribute properly to this book club. that said i'm glad i started as it's not the kind of thing i normally read and has been very enlightening in many ways and i intend to see it to the finish. there's just no chance of me doing it within this book club period, it'll take me a few months.

the difficult thing about taking it slowly is that there's so many names and keeping track of them is a challenge.

 

[Haly]

I picked up the sequel, Dark Sun, on a whim. Going to get around to it later.

 

[Necrovex]

Any stragglers? We're finally approaching the end! And I'm actually on track to finish this weekend. Woo!

Since TolkienGAF just launched a Silmarillion read-through, I'll probably defer on having a book club next month.

Why not a Silmarillion Book Club?

 

[Haly]

Why not a Silmarillion Book Club?

He means since there's overlap between us and TolkienGAF and someone is already putting in the effort into The Silmarillion read through (a lot of effort, it sounds like the syllabus for a college course), Cyan doesn't want to steal their thunder or dilute the threads.

 

[Cyan]

Nearly finished. Just the epilogue to go.

My God, that last chapter was... horrific. Mind-boggling. Painful to read.

 

[Cyan]

Finishing this book feels like an achievement in itself. In a way, the title is misleading. Rhodes' history is about far more than just the making of the atomic bomb. It's about everything that led up to it, including a good fifty years worth of history of physics. It's about the use and immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb. It's about, in a smaller sense, the politics that led up to and into the Cold War.

But most of all it's about people.

Rhodes goes to great length to make sure his readers have a full understanding of everyone involved, their personalities, their upbringings, what made them the way they are. The Making of the Atomic Bomb's prodigious size is in large part due to that focus, to that need to digress into personal histories every time a new character is introduced. It's a bold choice, and it's one that works perfectly.

Rhodes paints in broad strokes, but does so with enough precision to give the reader a strong feel for even the minor players. For the more significant players, the Szilards and Tellers and Oppenheimers, we get a much more thorough grounding and understanding, a deeper delve into both past and present, into personality. It is this that makes the book tick, that makes the length palatable and justified.

I feel, having read the book, that I almost know Szilard. I feel that I have met Oppenheimer. I can almost hear Rutherford's big voice and Bohr's laugh.

More miraculous than this, even, is that I feel that I understand atomic physics and the creation of the atomic bomb. No doubt this feeling will fade over time as the details blur, but Rhodes explains things so smoothly and clearly you hardly notice that you're all but getting a physics lecture until you're through it and another aspect of the atomic bomb has clicked into place.

People and physics. It's funny to give second billing to the material the book is nominally about, but Rhodes recognizes that this is not a science textbook but a story, and stories are driven by characters. His story is driven all the way to the bitter end.

 

[Cyan]

Seems like we're done here. (Though if anyone else has final impressions or anything else to say, feel free!)

In lieu of a new standard book club next month, please check out Loxley and Edmond Dantes the White's Silmarillion Read-through.

 

[Javaman]

I hate to double post but this thread needs an injection of life, much like the nuclear program before Los Alamos.

So, finished this today. I was a bit surprised, because given the size of the book (by my Kindle's reckoning) I was only 70% done. Afterwards I realized 30% of the Kindle edition is pictures, footnotes and other secondary material, which is truly impressive. I had expected the book to delve into the aftermath of the bomb, and the ensuing Cold War, so I felt like ending on Nagasaki wasted some of the book's potential. As it is, the finale is rather weak, especially when compared to the buildup to the first nuclear pile. It just sort of meanders off into nowhere.

I'm, however, glad the book didn't gloss over the destruction of Hiroshima. Those eyewitness accounts were very evocative, although oddly detached. I guess it's difficult to genuinely convey the horror of the situation across a language barrier (Japanese to English), a culture barrier (Japan to America), and a temporal barrier (50s to 2010s), much like how reading about the Holocaust in high school never engendered strong emotions in me.

In conclusion, great beginning and middle with a somewhat disappointing ending that has left me kind of ambivalent about the whole thing due to recency bias. I'll say one thing about it, though. If I had read this monstrosity during my formative years, I would've very likely gone into physics or chemistry. Definitely a book that can define a life, at the right place and time.

Severely late to the party, but a good book to pick up where this one ends is "command and control". Another Gaffer recommended it and was a great read. It focuses on the accidents and close calls we've had during the build up of nuclear weapons but more relevant to this topic explains a lot of the strategies and tactics that were developed to counter the USSR threat. It's scary how close we were to annihilation during the cold war, and how lucky we were that we didn't accidentally nuke ourselves.