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Cargando... The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986)por Richard Rhodes
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. I was looking forward to finding out about the years of constructing the bomb. This book starts a lot farther back than that. It gives information about the background of people significant in developing the background knowledge necessary to know how to do it. It also make it clear that many of the people developing the necessary theories were Jewish and living in an area where Hitler made it dangerous. Travails in getting out out the country are described. Alas, I did not finish this book because it was a Kindle Unlimited loan and I no longer have a KU subscription "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - Bhagavad Gita The quote from the Bhagavad Gita was Oppenheimer's reaction to the test bomb, the Trinity, carried out on July 15, 1945. Up until that time, the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project were not completely sure if the bomb would work. Shortly before the test, Fermi "offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so whether it would merely destroy the world." (p. 665) The book chronicles verbose detail, the scientific discoveries, historical events, and political decisions that led to the new and most cruel bomb" (Emperor Hirohito) to ignite over Japan in August of 1945. The horror it unleashed is described in the last chapter. Survivors are quoted and their accounts are painful to read. "In my mind's eye, like a waking dream, I could see the tongues of fire at work on the bodies of men." - Masugi Ibuse, "Black Rain Many of the scientists were horrified at the bomb's use, but as one survivor asked, "Those scientists who invented the bomb, wrote a young woman who was a fourth-grade student at Horsima- "what did they think would happen if they dropped it?" I was very impressed with the work the author put into this book. I got an overview of the development of the nuclear physics field from 1900 forward thru WWII. I got a better understanding of the decision making process for German scientists as they departed Germany under Hitler. I got a new understanding of the amount of chemistry work required as they tried various ways to create a chain reaction, and manage it. I got a better grasp of the magnitude (and pace!) of the Manhattan Project. I got a better understanding of how the rationale to drop the bomb on a city was made. Part of this was a better grasp of the nature of the fire-bombing of German cities and its rationale - which was lead up to the nuclear bomb decision. And finally, painfully, I got a painful grasp of the devastation of the bomb when dropped. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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HTML:The definitive history of nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project. From the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan, Richard Rhodes's Pulitzer Prize??winning book 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 No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)623.4511909Technology Engineering and allied operations Military Engineering and Marine Engineering Technology of Weapons and Armaments Explosives, Rockets, and BombsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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When I finished reading through the final chapter’s last pages, I wondered: what’s the most important book ever written? I did a quick Google and found that all the suggested lists used the word “influential” instead, not what I wanted. I put quotes around the query and was not too pleased to find a bunch of christian websites using SEO to convince Google to serve an answer: the Bible.
I’m not going to suggest that The Making of the Atomic Bomb is the most important book ever written. I think it’s up on the list, in the top quarter, at least. It is probably one of the most important books I’ve read. Many Americans know a vague sketch of the Manhattan Project; I expect very few could trace its history back to Leo Szilard reading Ernest Rutherford calling the idea of liberating atomic energy “moonshine.”
The book is a tome, and there’s no way around it. Some readers will think the history too far-flung, too detailed, and too long. I scratched my head through passages of the book and had to read and reread a few of them. Yet, this is a literary work of high quality. The whole book is a gentle but consistently rising crescendo.
The final two chapters - Trinity and Tongues of Fire - are astounding. It may be the best non-fiction writing I have had the pleasure and discomfort of reading. In Trinity, Rhodes walks us on a nearly second-by-second countdown to the terrible culmination of centuries of scientific work. Tongues of Flame elevates numerous accounts of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, deploying language to try and communicate the incommunicable.
There are so many roads one could go down following this. I found Colonel Stimson compelling. I’ve known the tale of his removal of Kyoto from the list of targets for a long, long time - but I always understood the reasoning as little more than his honeymooning there (a tale the movie OPPENHEIMER recounts). This book paints a much more nuanced view of Stimson as someone horrified by the bomb (and horrified by the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo) and as a statesman straddling generations and losing purchase in an evolving world.
It took me a long time to get through this book, but I’m glad I did. Astounding. ( )