The Making of the Atomic Bomb
A little while ago I finished reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. I have to say, this is one of those books that I think is an absolute must-read for anyone living today, because it goes very far in explaining why the world is the way that it now is.
Rhodes doesn’t just talk about the Manhattan Project itself in this book; he digs very deeply into the very first ideas and concepts that led to the fission bomb, and the nature of the scientists behind these amazing discoveries. Their philosophies and motivations, their perspectives on science and life and politics, and their experiences through the First and Second World Wars, all are explored by Rhodes in this book. He also touches on the actual scientific experiments, concepts, and discoveries these men made, but without going so deep as to become pedantic. Finally, when the fission bomb was fully realized by these men, Rhodes explores their varied reactions to this notorious achievement, especially as they saw it put into use by the US military. Rhodes completes the story by discussing the international climate immediately following the end of WWII, which sets the stage for today’s circumstances.
The only caveat is that this book is not for the squeamish - Rhodes does nothing to obscure the true nature of war’s carnage, and in fact he quite eloquently illustrates the absolutely horrific impact that these wars had on their participants. Don’t get me wrong - he doesn’t dwell on these things unnecessarily, but where they are relevant and appropriate, Rhodes certainly doesn’t pull any punches. He clearly illustrates the most fundamental tenet of war: There are no winners, only survivors.
About the only thing that I don’t like about Rhodes’ book is his underlying perspective on how the looming threat of worldwide nuclear warfare can be averted. He fully subscribes to Niels Bohr’s “open world” philosophy, which strikes me as an overly idealistic notion. It is a nice dream, but it requires a wholesale change of human nature to realize it, and well, good luck with that one. I don’t think that the realities of human nature are given their due consideration by Rhodes’ discussion of Bohr’s philosophy.
Finally, here are a few questions that I had, that this book shed some light on:
- Why the UN (and the US leadership, in particular) gets so bent out of shape when nations don’t allow arms-inspections. This book gives a great deal of insight on that particular topic. After WWII ended and the Cold War began heating up, the policy of arms-inspections became an extremely serious topic for the UN.
- Some very important background on this whole debate of whether the USA “needed” to use the fission bomb to end the war with Japan. I’m serious - you will really appreciate the depth of this whole issue much better after reading this book. It gets down to the US desire to bring about an unconditional surrender from Japan, which was deemed by the US leadership to be extremely important after the results of World War I.
Plus, I got a whole lot of other really valuable insights out of this book, which are probably too numerous to list here.
Anyway, read this book. You will definitely get a lot out of it. Plus, I don’t think you can possibly get better entertainment value for your $20. Just skip two movies, get this book, and enjoy the true story it has to tell.