Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I will echo the other reviewers: this is one of the best, if not the best book I have read. The book covers the subect on a number of levels. First is the factual story of the events leading up to the making of the bomb, which in themselves would be fascinating. For example, the fact that in two years the Manhattan Project built an industrial plant larger than the US automobile manufacturing base. That only in December of 1938 was the fission of Uranium first discovered, but the course of events were so rapid as to lead to the Trinity test in July of 1945. As a sometime program manager, but no General Groves, it was a fascinating account of the world's most significant projecct. The second level is a very enjoyable history of nuclear physics as the reader is lead through the discovery process from the turn of the century to thermonuclear fusion. That discovery process is the vehicle for the third and fourth levels of the book. The stories and personalities of the scientists, around the world, who added to that knowledge, what shaped and motivated their lives and how they indiviually gained insight, brilliant insight, into the riddle that was physics. I felt I got to know people like Rutherford, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard, and Teller. The fourth level was that the insight was not really individual but collaborative. This book is one of the finest descriptions of the scientific process and how this open, collaborative and communicative process works across boundaries. The last level, the biggest surprise and the most profoundly unsettling, was the realization of how this event, inevitable, has "changed everything" about human history - an appreciation, I believe 55 years later, we who did not participate in the Manhattan Project, have yet to fully realize. Niels Bohr realized it in an instant. The book is superbly written. The personalies came alive, I felt I knew Niels Bohr. It was absolutely suspenseful even though you know the ending (you don't really). I was caught up in the story as though it were a novel. After reading late the night before, one evening I came home and declared to my wife "They dropped the bomb!". Such was the intensity of my participation in the book that my voice had excitement to it. She was horrified. I had to explain, "No, no. In the book. On Hiroshima". When history is that exciting it is hard to beat. This is one of only a few books about which I can say that I will never quite view the world the same again. A masterpiece and a must read.