Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 928 pages
- Published by: Simon & Schuster August 1, 1995
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0684813785
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0684813783
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
- Weighs: 2.4 pounds
Product Review
If the first 270 pages of this book had been published separately, they would have made up a lively, insightful, gorgeously written history of theoretical physics and the men and women who plumbed the mysteries of the atom. Along with the following 600 pages, they become a sweeping epic, filled with terror and pity, of the ultimate scientific quest: the development of the ultimate weapon. Rhodes is a peerless explainer of difficult concepts; he is even better at chronicling the personalities who made the discoveries that led to the Bomb.
Niels Bohr dominates the first half of the book as J. Robert Oppenheimer does the second; both men were gifted philosophers of science as well as brilliant physicists. The central irony of this book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, is that the greatest minds of the century contributed to the greatest destructive force in history.
From Publishers Weekly
This winner of the NBCC,
NBA and Pulitzer prizes is being published to coincide with the 50th anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the hardcover publication of Rhodes's new book, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader ReviewsEveryone seeking to understand the 20th century, its history, its politics, its scientific development, must read this book. Not only does it illuminate one of the foundational events of our time far better than any other source, it definitively sets forth modern science, its ethical dilemmas, its odd combination of unbelievable explanatory power and the utterly (humanly) unfathomable reality science suggests. Rhodes traces the development of the atomic bomb to its scientific roots, which he demonstrates are inextricably intertwined with the people pushing the scientific developments at an ever increasing speed and for a long time had no idea of the potential their theories carried. Rhodes manages to do all this with complete lucidity, allowing the reader totally unfamiliar with quantum mechanics to follow along with reasonable comprehension. At the same time, the psychological, ethical and political dramas Rhodes describes make this the hands-down most thrilling, most exciting book I have ever read
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