The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

RHODES, Richard.

Item Number: 21083

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

First edition of the author’s work which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Octavo, original half cloth. Inscribed by the author on the half title page, “To W. Tribbey and Jean Nickerson- Old friends- with best wishes Richard Rhodes.” Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch of rubbing.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb 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.