Thirteen Days of Atomigeddon 2: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

[james_davis_nicoll]

“The deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because they are possible to find.” The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

As ever, corrections accepted but I won't be able to act on them until tonight.

Comments

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

What is striking about The Making of the Atomic Bomb is that Rhodes brought a novelist's style to writing his history. It doesn't hurt that there were many truly interesting people involved of course, but Rhodes really makes people like Leo Szilard vividly alive on the page. It's a history that reads like a novel, starting from page one to the end. I've read other histories that come close to what Rhodes pulled off (James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom for one), but never one with the sort of verve Rhodes gave this work.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I knew the story, but Rhodes really made it... sing is the wrong word. Threnodize I guess we have it. I think it's a defining story of the United States, the 'West', some slice of civilization.

I did not know all of the background, like his telling of the recent birth of strategic bombing, i.e. conscious bombing of non-combatants, as a thing to be done by non-terrorists. One detail I found remarkable was the early thinking about aerial bombing, before it had ever really been done: some people thought of aerial bombing as a superweapon that would be completely unwithstandable, and even as a weapon that would end war.