---
product_id: 106891711
title: "The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition"
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# In-depth Historical Analysis 25th Anniversary Edition Comprehensive Research The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

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## Summary

> 💥 Unlock the Secrets of History!

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- **What is this?** The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition
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## Key Features

- • **Expert Insights:** Gain perspectives from leading historians and scientists.
- • **Unravel the Past:** Dive deep into the intricate history of nuclear science.
- • **Engaging Narrative:** Experience a compelling storytelling approach that captivates.
- • **Digital Convenience:** Read anytime, anywhere with Kindle's portability.
- • **Exclusive Anniversary Content:** Discover new chapters and insights not found in previous editions.

## Overview

The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition Kindle Edition offers a comprehensive exploration of the development of nuclear weapons, featuring updated content and expert analysis, making it an essential read for history enthusiasts and professionals alike.

## Description

The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition - Kindle edition by Rhodes, Richard. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition.

Review: The starting place in understanding deterrence and nuclear policy. - It took me over 20 years to finish The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, though I wasn’t reading it constantly throughout that period. I initially started it years ago and then picked it up again recently. The book is exceptional—thorough, detailed, and incredibly well-researched. It’s a critical work for understanding the 20th century, as it delves deeply into the scientific, political, and moral dimensions of the atomic bomb’s creation. It offers a perspective on history without the benefit of hindsight, which is invaluable. One of the most striking aspects of Rhodes' narrative is the way it presents the decisions and dilemmas faced by the key figures involved, like J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves. Given the information they had at the time, their actions and choices are more understandable, and the complexity of their situation is revealed. The book doesn’t provide neat answers or conclusions; rather, it shows that the development of the atomic bomb was an incredibly complicated process shaped by an array of factors—scientific, military, political, and ethical. In hindsight, we often view the arms race of the Cold War through a simplified lens, but this book makes it clear that understanding the atomic bomb’s origins is key to grasping the larger Cold War dynamics. Rhodes foreshadows the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the text makes it clear that the atomic bomb was just the beginning of a much broader and more dangerous arms race. In the end, reading this book forces you to come away with the realization that “it’s complicated.” The issues surrounding nuclear weapons—whether in terms of power, morality, or strategy—are far too complex to reduce to simple slogans or bumper-sticker conclusions. Rhodes’ narrative warns us about oversimplification, demonization, or the rush to arrive at easy answers. We do a disservice to history, to the people who made these decisions, and to ourselves if we attempt to understand the atomic age without first grappling with the thorough, nuanced history laid out in this book.
Review: Fascinating, readable and comprehensive history of how our understanding of nuclear structure developed in the 20th century - This is much more than simply a history of how the first atomic bombs were developed. Richard Rhodes begins with what he calls the 'prehistory' of the Manhattan Project, starting with the discovery of radioactivity and continuing through the steps by which physicists, chemists and other scientists came to understand the structure of the atom, the existence of protons, neutrons and electrons, as well as the various particles that may be emitted through radioactive decay or as a result of processes such as bombardment or, eventually, nuclear fission. It is a fascinating look at how scientists, working in laboratories and with tools we would consider very primitive today, were able to slowly understand the structure of the atom, something that could not be seen or directly measured but had to be understood by applying theories and logic to the experimental results they were able to obtain. As the story reaches the time when Hitler began to take power in Germany, the scientists who were the leading researchers in physics in Europe begin to migrate to England and then to the United States. Early developments at the Max Planck Institute for Physics started Germany on the road to developing its own nuclear weapon, an effort thwarted by the Allies throughout the war and severely handicapped by the loss of scientists who had fled Germany and joined the efforts in the United States. Japan also had its own nascent effort to develop a nuclear weapon but was unable to make much progress, lacking the necessary resources and industrial infrastructure. Ultimately, only the United States had the scientists (many from Europe) and industrial capability to develop nuclear weapons, and by the end of the war the various facilities that had been constructed to enrich uranium, produce plutonium and support these efforts was altogether equivalent to the size of the american automobile industry at the time. The scientists who had developed the atomic bomb were not certain it would work, or what the effects would be, until the first bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert. This 'Trinity' test took place just one day before President Truman met with Churchill and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference. The war in Europe against Germany had concluded on May 8, 1945, but the war in the Pacific against Japan continued. President Truman now knew that he had the atomic bomb available for use against Japan, which had so far refused to agree to an unconditional surrender. The book concludes with an accounting of the bombs effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, recounting stories of survivors and describing what it was like on the ground for those who survived the initial blast, some with lingering effects that led to death soon thereafter, and some with longer term suffering. It is a very sobering reminder of the terrible power of these devices (John Hersey's classic account Hiroshima , first published in The New Yorker in 1946, is an even more comprehensive and definitive story). The first atomic bomb used by one nation against another was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan on August 6, 1945. It had a yield equivalent to 13-18,000 tons (13-18 kilotons) of TNT (Rhodes book states 12,500 tons, wiki now gives the range I've indicated). The second atomic bomb used by one nation against another was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan on August 9, 1945. It had a yield equivalent to 20-22,000 tons (20-22 kilotons) of TNT. Those first two bombs, causing so much devastation, with yields of about 13-22 kilotons of TNT. Since that time, atomic weapons have not again been used by one nation against another. So far. The United States (as well as the Soviet Union) subsequently developed weapons as large as megaton capability, some that were hundreds and reaching a thousand times more powerful and destructive than the bombs dropped on Japan in World War II (the largest being the USSR's Tsar Bomba, aka "Big Ivan", at 50 megaton and which was tested in 1961, but only one seems to have been built). Our current inventory, as I understand it, is largely comprised of weapons in the hundreds of kilotons range, thus ten times or greater more destructive than those WW II weapons, with others still available to us (I believe) that go even larger and may be as much as a hundred times more destructive. The yields obtained by Pakistan, in 1998 tests of their own nuclear bombs, were reported to be in the 12 kiloton and 30-36 kiloton range, and it is thought that they may have developed warheads as large as 300-500 kiloton. This "25th Anniversary" version is notable for the Forward written by Rhodes, in which he reflects on the development of the bomb as well as the concerns that are as important as ever today, where we worry about countries still seeking to develop nuclear power and nuclear weapons for their own use. Rhodes cites the 1996 Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which asserted in its 'axiom of proliferation' that "As long as any state has nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them." Rhodes relates a discussion that he had with the Australian ambassador-at-large for nuclear disarmament, Richard Butler, who says "The basic reason for this assertion is that justice, which most human beings interpret essentially as fairness, is demonstrably a concept of the deepest importance to people all over the world. Relating this to the axiom of proliferation, it is manifestly the case that the attempts over the years of those who own nuclear weapons to assert that their security justifies having those nuclear weapons while the security of others does not, has been an abject failure."

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| ASIN  | B008TRU7SQ |
| Accessibility  | Learn more |
| Best Sellers Rank | #28,803 in Kindle Store ( See Top 100 in Kindle Store ) #2 in History of Physics #3 in Nuclear Physics (Books) #4 in Nuclear Weapons & Warfare History (Kindle Store) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (4,120) |
| Edition  | 25th Anniversary ed. |
| Enhanced typesetting  | Enabled |
| File size  | 52.8 MB |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1439126226 |
| Language  | English |
| Page Flip  | Enabled |
| Print length  | 1499 pages |
| Publication date  | September 18, 2012 |
| Publisher  | Simon & Schuster |
| Screen Reader  | Supported |
| Word Wise  | Enabled |
| X-Ray  | Enabled |

## Images

![The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71RwJUCWuaL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The starting place in understanding deterrence and nuclear policy.
*by J***A on December 14, 2024*

It took me over 20 years to finish The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, though I wasn’t reading it constantly throughout that period. I initially started it years ago and then picked it up again recently. The book is exceptional—thorough, detailed, and incredibly well-researched. It’s a critical work for understanding the 20th century, as it delves deeply into the scientific, political, and moral dimensions of the atomic bomb’s creation. It offers a perspective on history without the benefit of hindsight, which is invaluable. One of the most striking aspects of Rhodes' narrative is the way it presents the decisions and dilemmas faced by the key figures involved, like J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves. Given the information they had at the time, their actions and choices are more understandable, and the complexity of their situation is revealed. The book doesn’t provide neat answers or conclusions; rather, it shows that the development of the atomic bomb was an incredibly complicated process shaped by an array of factors—scientific, military, political, and ethical. In hindsight, we often view the arms race of the Cold War through a simplified lens, but this book makes it clear that understanding the atomic bomb’s origins is key to grasping the larger Cold War dynamics. Rhodes foreshadows the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the text makes it clear that the atomic bomb was just the beginning of a much broader and more dangerous arms race. In the end, reading this book forces you to come away with the realization that “it’s complicated.” The issues surrounding nuclear weapons—whether in terms of power, morality, or strategy—are far too complex to reduce to simple slogans or bumper-sticker conclusions. Rhodes’ narrative warns us about oversimplification, demonization, or the rush to arrive at easy answers. We do a disservice to history, to the people who made these decisions, and to ourselves if we attempt to understand the atomic age without first grappling with the thorough, nuanced history laid out in this book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fascinating, readable and comprehensive history of how our understanding of nuclear structure developed in the 20th century
*by P***A on December 13, 2014*

This is much more than simply a history of how the first atomic bombs were developed. Richard Rhodes begins with what he calls the 'prehistory' of the Manhattan Project, starting with the discovery of radioactivity and continuing through the steps by which physicists, chemists and other scientists came to understand the structure of the atom, the existence of protons, neutrons and electrons, as well as the various particles that may be emitted through radioactive decay or as a result of processes such as bombardment or, eventually, nuclear fission. It is a fascinating look at how scientists, working in laboratories and with tools we would consider very primitive today, were able to slowly understand the structure of the atom, something that could not be seen or directly measured but had to be understood by applying theories and logic to the experimental results they were able to obtain. As the story reaches the time when Hitler began to take power in Germany, the scientists who were the leading researchers in physics in Europe begin to migrate to England and then to the United States. Early developments at the Max Planck Institute for Physics started Germany on the road to developing its own nuclear weapon, an effort thwarted by the Allies throughout the war and severely handicapped by the loss of scientists who had fled Germany and joined the efforts in the United States. Japan also had its own nascent effort to develop a nuclear weapon but was unable to make much progress, lacking the necessary resources and industrial infrastructure. Ultimately, only the United States had the scientists (many from Europe) and industrial capability to develop nuclear weapons, and by the end of the war the various facilities that had been constructed to enrich uranium, produce plutonium and support these efforts was altogether equivalent to the size of the american automobile industry at the time. The scientists who had developed the atomic bomb were not certain it would work, or what the effects would be, until the first bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert. This 'Trinity' test took place just one day before President Truman met with Churchill and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference. The war in Europe against Germany had concluded on May 8, 1945, but the war in the Pacific against Japan continued. President Truman now knew that he had the atomic bomb available for use against Japan, which had so far refused to agree to an unconditional surrender. The book concludes with an accounting of the bombs effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, recounting stories of survivors and describing what it was like on the ground for those who survived the initial blast, some with lingering effects that led to death soon thereafter, and some with longer term suffering. It is a very sobering reminder of the terrible power of these devices (John Hersey's classic account Hiroshima , first published in The New Yorker in 1946, is an even more comprehensive and definitive story). The first atomic bomb used by one nation against another was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan on August 6, 1945. It had a yield equivalent to 13-18,000 tons (13-18 kilotons) of TNT (Rhodes book states 12,500 tons, wiki now gives the range I've indicated). The second atomic bomb used by one nation against another was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan on August 9, 1945. It had a yield equivalent to 20-22,000 tons (20-22 kilotons) of TNT. Those first two bombs, causing so much devastation, with yields of about 13-22 kilotons of TNT. Since that time, atomic weapons have not again been used by one nation against another. So far. The United States (as well as the Soviet Union) subsequently developed weapons as large as megaton capability, some that were hundreds and reaching a thousand times more powerful and destructive than the bombs dropped on Japan in World War II (the largest being the USSR's Tsar Bomba, aka "Big Ivan", at 50 megaton and which was tested in 1961, but only one seems to have been built). Our current inventory, as I understand it, is largely comprised of weapons in the hundreds of kilotons range, thus ten times or greater more destructive than those WW II weapons, with others still available to us (I believe) that go even larger and may be as much as a hundred times more destructive. The yields obtained by Pakistan, in 1998 tests of their own nuclear bombs, were reported to be in the 12 kiloton and 30-36 kiloton range, and it is thought that they may have developed warheads as large as 300-500 kiloton. This "25th Anniversary" version is notable for the Forward written by Rhodes, in which he reflects on the development of the bomb as well as the concerns that are as important as ever today, where we worry about countries still seeking to develop nuclear power and nuclear weapons for their own use. Rhodes cites the 1996 Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which asserted in its 'axiom of proliferation' that "As long as any state has nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them." Rhodes relates a discussion that he had with the Australian ambassador-at-large for nuclear disarmament, Richard Butler, who says "The basic reason for this assertion is that justice, which most human beings interpret essentially as fairness, is demonstrably a concept of the deepest importance to people all over the world. Relating this to the axiom of proliferation, it is manifestly the case that the attempts over the years of those who own nuclear weapons to assert that their security justifies having those nuclear weapons while the security of others does not, has been an abject failure."

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by R***R on October 24, 2017*

I literally could not put the book aside, I read it in every free minute I found. As someone very interested in engineering and physics, but a layman, it was very easy to follow and understand the atomic concepts and how (in theory) it worked. A lasting impression formed when the last part of the book explains in detail the reality of having used this bomb ...

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