The Making of the Atomic Bomb

I knew the Manhattan Project was big, but I never realized how immense it truly was. This book left me in awe of how scientists recognized and unleashed the power of the atom. Rhodes makes the technical details as compelling as the personalities and relationships he weaves into this sprawling saga.

My favorite character is Leo Szilard, who conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction while waiting at a traffic light. He secretly donated his patent on atomic chain reactions to the British government and convinced Einstein to co-sign a letter warning President Roosevelt about German efforts to develop… show more.

Even after almost forty years, Rhodes’s book is still the most detailed, accurate, and readable account of how the atomic bomb came to be. 

The author’s description of the moment Leo Szilard realized the weapon was possible still brings me to tears. Nobody has done this history better.  

I think that the atomic bomb project can only be compared in complexity to putting a man on the Moon, and this Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Rhodes describes all the process, from the discovery of fission in the 19th century to the Manhattan Project and the dropping of two bombs to end the Second World War.

The book covers so many famous names (Einstein, Curie, Fermi, Teller, Heisenberg, Dirac, von Neumann, Feynman, and obviously Oppenheimer, among many more) and also discusses sidelines, such as the secret missions planned to impede the Nazis from developing their own weapon.

I’m… show more.

Published nineteen years before American Prometheus, this book also won a Pulitzer Prize.

A self-taught scientific writer, Rhodes is able to weave vivid character portrayals into the narrative of the science behind the bomb, turning a complex story into fascinating reading. Over several lunches with Patricia, Rhodes described Oppenheimer as someone who could antagonize and amuse at the same time.

She found the writer’s psychological  insights especially revealing. This is a book to be read and re-read.

Richard Rhodes has crafted a very readable account of how the world’s leading physicists were recruited to the Manhattan Project during World War 2, and how the industrial might of the United States was employed to transform their ideas into weapons of unprecedented destructive power.

Rhodes succeeds in presenting a historical account of the politics behind the race to create nuclear weapons and the personal stories of the people involved, whilst providing clear explanations of the nuclear physics where necessary.

I first read the book several decades ago and it came as a revelation. Although I had studied physics for… show more.

The invention of the A-bomb was the most intensive, expensive, and extensive weapons development program in history. Rhodes’ book is a magisterial, gripping telling of this story—from nascent ideas to the terrors of Nagasaki. Pulitzer prize-winner, it’s essential reading to understand the birth of today’s big science.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is the be-all, end-all of reads on the Manhattan Project. Full stop.

If I were forced to recommend just one book to immerse yourself into every aspect of the project, from the science to the politics and more, it would be this one. Don’t let the tremendous page-count scare you off—Rhodes is a smooth, readable, and engaging writer.

A deep, deep dive into one of the most important, and consequential, scientific projects in history. It’s an epic story whose consequences we’re still living with today.