**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.

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

ContentsPart One: Profound and Necessary Truth1. Moonshine2. Atoms and Void3. Tvi4. The Long Grave Already Dug5. Men from Mars6. Machines7. Exodus8. Stirring and Digging9. An Extensive BurstPart Two: A Peculiar Sovereignty10. Neutrons11. Cross Sections12. A Communication from Britain13. The New World14. Physics and Desert Country15. Different Animals16. Revelations17. The Evils of This TimePart Three: Life and Death18. Trinity19. Tongues of FireEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex