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. 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 twenty-five 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 yon Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight. Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step minute by minute and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.
