Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

Written by:
Richard Rhodes
Narrated by:
Holter Graham

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
18
Narrator
4
Release Date
February 2016
Duration
37 hours 16 minutes
Summary
**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award**

The definitive history of nuclear weapons—from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work 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 work.
Reviews
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John David S.

How did this ever win so much acclaim? No detail is too minor too be left out. No character is too minor nor to have their entire biography included. No experiment that didn't lead anywhere is not described in agonizing detail. Really, you could lose 40% of the content and actually lose nothing. And could you get a narrator who has ever seen an equation, before?

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Anonymous

The book itself might be great but the audio recording quality of this audiobook is sub-par. You really have to concentrate to not miss any information instead of relax and enjoy the book itself.

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