Torturous. ( )

Torturous. ( )

Torturous. ( )

History of the making of the Atomic bomb from 1939 to the first Soviet bomb “Joe 1”

A hugely ambitious book following the developments in physics immediately before the war and the physicists who pursued the bomb in France, Britain, Germany, USA and USSR taking in all the key figures. This was fascinating reading but occasionally got bogged down in detail but at just under 500 pages there wasn’t much “unnecessary” detail. Although I was familiar with the UK & USA development of the bomb which culminated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki I wasn’t at all familiar with the French contribution, the German efforts during the war or the espionage that brought the USSR the bomb. Along the way we see heavy water and other materials smuggled out of occupied France by the French physicists, the “Heroes of Telemark” story (the sabotage of the German controlled Heavy Water plant in Norway). Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Bohr, Einstein and many other physicists make an appearance, we see attitudes of the US and UK governments on the bomb and there is a great afterword on nuclear proliferation post WW2 and the state of the nuclear threat today (well when the book was published so a couple of years out of date). Technical details are included but well explained so that you understand fission, enrichment and all the rest of the jargon that goes along with nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Overall – Highly recommended to those interested in WW2 history and the beginning of the cold war. ( )

Stonking heavyweight history of atomic developments in four countries through the war. See www.popularscience.co.uk/reviews/rev454.htm for full review. ( )