The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Abstract

1078 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE W. David Lewis and William F. Trimble have written a welldocumented story of a great experiment, in good old-fashioned English, eschewing quasi-technical terms or conventional trendy clichés. They support the thoroughly readable text with the statutory “footnotes” demanded of the scholarly fraternity as a sine qua non. (But I join A. J. P. Taylor in his abhorrence of putting notes at the end of the book, necessitating much thumbing of pages and much losing of place.) My main criticism of this book should probably be directed not at the authors but at the publisher. The photographs do not reproduce well on the slightly absorbent paper. They were not always captioned clearly: I read the explanation on page 112 several times before realizing that half the picture was missing. The text cries out for cartographic support in appropriate places, where the ever-changing route network is discussed. The map on page 137 comes as a surprise, as hitherto an atlas was needed for clarification. Worst of all is the absence of diagrams to explain the workings and subsequent modifi­ cations of the grappling system, ground installations, and tension­ easing devices. I read the textual explanations several times and confess that 1 was little wiser than when I began. These shortcomings apart, however, I thoroughly recommend this book as a fascinating account of one of the brave attempts, but at the same time one of the failures, in air transport history—an attempt that laid the foundations of one of the major trunk airlines today, USAir. R. E. G. Davies Mr. Davies is the curator of air transport at the National Air and Space Museum. He has written extensively on the subject of airline history and of air transport, in six books as well as innumerable periodical articles. The All American airmail pickup scheme is referred to in his book Airlines ofthe United States since 1914, which sets the operation in the broader perspective of the growth of the local service and regional airline industry. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. By Richard Rhodes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. Pp. 886; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22.95 (cloth); $12.95 (paper). This Pulitzer and National Book Prize—winning work (for 1987) by Richard Rhodes is an exceptionally well-written account of the building and use of the first nuclear weapons. Rhodes presents an extensive historical exploration of the scientific and political back­ ground to the bomb that focuses on people—the scientists, engineers, and administrators. He synthesizes a large amount of material, most of it published, and ably weaves various lines of development together to render a most up-to-date and surely most readable version of the exciting story. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1079 Starting with Ernest Rutherford’s 1911 discovery of the atomic nucleus, the first third of the book is mostly devoted to the history of nuclear physics before World War II. By narrating the milestone events in the held up to the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, Rhodes does more than provide the necessary scientific framework within which the bomb was created. Scientists’ faith in and practice of openness are well illustrated. Scientists are also shown interacting far beyond their national boundaries. Making full use of biographies, Rhodes introduces prominent scientists such as Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg,James Chadwick, Enrico Fermi, Otto Hahn, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, Ed­ ward Teller, and many others, when he describes their discoveries. These men eventually became the central figures in the atomic bomb projects on the two sides of World War II. The American efforts apparently originated in “the Hungarian Conspiracy” led by Szilard. Always concerned about the fate of the world, Szilard, in the days after fission’s discovery, was alarmed by the possibility of an atomic bomb and particularly of its being in Nazi hands first. Together with Eugene Wigner and Teller, two fellow Hungarian refugee scientists, he went to see Einstein to encourage him to write what became the famous letter that brought the matter to President Roosevelt’s attention. Although given some support in 1939, for bureaucratic and technical reasons the bomb...