The Making Of The Atomic Bomb with New A Foreword

Twenty-six years after its initial publication, The Making of the Atomic Bomb remains the seminal and complete story of how the first atomic bombs were 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 at the end of a terrible world war.

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly–or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than 25 years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the bomb, with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers–Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann–stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

A narrative rich in human, political, and scientific detail. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a book for the ages. The Modern Library includes it in its list of the 100 best books of the 20th century.