#205 in History books
Use arrows to jump to the previous/next product

Reddit mentions of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Sentiment score: 4
Reddit mentions: 23

We found 23 Reddit mentions of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Here are the top ones.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Buying options
View on Amazon.com
or
    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
Specs:
Height9.25 Inches
Length6.12 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateAugust 1995
Weight0.00220462262 Pounds
Width1.7 Inches

idea-bulb Interested in what Redditors like? Check out our Shuffle feature

Shuffle: random products popular on Reddit

Found 23 comments on The Making of the Atomic Bomb:

u/nobodyspecial · 11 pointsr/science

If nothing else, Russia can claim it was the first nuclear power plant built with slave labor.

Richard Rhodes documents how Beria didn't give a fuck what happened to the laborers who built their reactors so simple safety precautions were ignored. They just let the slaves die. Even if you survived the construction project, working on it was a one way ticket since Stalin didn't want the West to know where the reactor was.

u/omaca · 9 pointsr/history

If anyone is really interested in this topic, I recommend Richard Rhodes' Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It is, quite simply, one of the best history (and science!) books ever written.

Oh, and Heisenberg was bluffing (after the war, when he claimed he "sabotaged" the Nazi effort). If he could have produced a working atomic bomb for Germany he would have.

u/[deleted] · 9 pointsr/reddit.com

I disagree. Read the relevant sections of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and get back to us. The book details the difficulties involved in actually machining a working device.

Edit: Basically, they went with the gun barrel design because it was more of an assured bet, and they still spent years working out the schematics and running tests to make sure their models were right and the bomb would, in fact, reach critical mass.

The implosion design was far more difficult and led to the invention of shaped charges. The precision required is far beyond that which most professionals are capable of achieving because it is simply not required for most applications.

The general designs are not secret and do not need to be given the difficulty in actually coming up with working blueprints from the basic idea. There's a reason why nuclear espionage is such a huge issue.

Everyone has access to the basic ideas, but not everyone has access to the brainpower required to come up with schematics based on the basic ideas. And as to your comment below, it takes more than raw computing power to model a nuclear explosion. These are not trivial systems to model, even with the aid of scientific literature pertaining to shockwave propagation theory, lensed charges, and numerical modeling methods.

u/markevens · 9 pointsr/history

The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes is one of my favorite books of all time, of any genre. I have yet to encounter any work of history that comes close to it.

  • It reads almost like one of the great works of literature, even though it is grade A 100% history through and through (~800 pages of history in addition to almost 100 pages of notes and bibliography).

  • It documents not just the scientific process that went into The Bomb, but the geo-political factors, a half-century of scientific development that made it even conceivable, and most importantly, reveals the humanity of all those involved so you see the interplay of personalities and how all that culminated in what actually happend.

  • It pulls no punches when it comes to the effects of the bomb on people. Tongues of Fire was, without a doubt, the most painful chapter I have ever read in any book, history or no. My first reading I had to put it down multiple times, my body shaking, before I could continue. Even recalling that chapter as I type sends a chill through my body.

    And if you don't want to take my word for it, you can try...

    Carl Sagan - "A stirring intellectual adventure, and a clear, fast-paced and indispensable history of events on which our future depends... the book is surprising and revealing."

    Isaac Asimov - "Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb is the best, the richest, and the deepest description of the development of physics in the first half of the century that I have yet read, and it is certainly the most enjoyable."

    The back cover of my copy has praise from a number of Nobel Prize winners as well.

    tl;dr If you enjoy history, this is simply a must read. Political, scientific, military, and intimate personal history all in one incredibly epic tomb surrounding one of mankind's greatest and most terrible achievements.
u/usna13 · 8 pointsr/books

The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I brought it on a plane. Let's just say it's a good thing I'm in the military and a white male.

Edit: I'm American. And it was in 2003. The TSA was not happy.

u/Tangurena · 7 pointsr/Economics

He would not have been permitted to participate in such a program. Einstein was advised to flee before he was to be arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. And indeed, there were a lot of other scientists that had to flee ahead of the gestapo to the US or UK. Rhodes books The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun describe the history of the A and H bomb projects.

Rhodes first book documented how everybody was working on an Atomic bomb project: Americans, British, Germans, Soviets and Japanese. The second book went into some more detail about both Japanese projects, including their version of Hanford located near the Chosin reservoir.

The Nuremburg laws basically threw all of the Jewish physicists (as well as teachers and scholars of every category) out of work by making it illegal for them to work in universities or other teaching institutions. The video Prisoner of Paradise showed what happened to some of the Jewish artists who thought they could wait out the insanity - because they thought it would just blow over.

u/freakball · 7 pointsr/philosophy

After reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes for the second time, I came to a startling conclusion: that many of the scientists were Jewish, and it seems natural to let the only Jewish nation in the world posses said weapons--if Israel were to disarm, it would face annihilation. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is only a microcosm of the general threat of a western nuclear power having been inserted in the middle east.

So, to answer your question, Bored; We define ownership of land by claiming it, pure and simple. If someone else wants to lay claim to said land, and invade, they must either vastly outnumber those that they are invading, or posses superior weapons. In effect; war is an evolutionary mechanism. The cultures and societies which are the best at utilizing the land's resources for the purpose of defending it against invasion outlive the cultures and societies which do not.

u/ChickenDelight · 6 pointsr/todayilearned

That's grossly inaccurate.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's very well-established that the Nazi scientists were nowhere near building a nuclear weapon, and their research was heading in completely the wrong direction (they were focused on building a big "nuclear heap", which can't possibly get you to critical mass)

It was bad enough that a number of historians have speculated that the Nazi scientists, who were all lukewarm about the regime, were intentionally fucking up their research (which is probably untrue, but it goes to how poorly things were going for them).

Great book if you want to learn more.

u/The_Greetest · 6 pointsr/IAmA

Thanks for doing this AMA, I was going to ask a question about how Oppenheimer was treated after the war, but p7r beat me to it.

Instead, I will recommend a book! If anyone in this thread is interested in science and history, I can't say enough good things about The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Seriously, it is one of the best books I've ever read, and it won a Pulitzer as well. It covers the making of the bomb starting from the discovery of the atom all the way to the use of the bomb. It does an amazing job of describing the science as well as the personalities, historical context of the war, and so much more. Read it, seriously.

u/SacaSoh · 6 pointsr/brasil

Naked Economics - conforme /u/jpjandrade recomendou (a Economia Nua e Crua em PT-BR) é sensacional, o tipo de livro que dá vontade de comprar 10 para dar de presente.

Outro um pouco mais avançado é Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, o qual creio não ter edição em PTBR ainda.

De história vai depender muito do seu gosto... os de economia são simples de escolher pois o básico da economia é o seu próprio núcleo... história é muito ampla...

Eu adoro história e devo ter uns 50 livros, sendo uns 20 sobre episódios específicos da Segunda Guerra. Recomendo os seguintes livros como sendo bons mesmo pra quem nunca leu nada a respeito (creio que todos os abaixos existam em PTBR, caso não leia em Inglês):

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land;

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War - Se gostou do filme, o livro é sensacional - totalmente baseado nos relatos das unidades presentes em combate;

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 - este livro é sensacional, se já ouviu alguma vez sobre a batalha de Stalingrado a leitura é obrigatória;

Por fim, caso goste de ciência (física e química especificamente) e de história militar, este foi o livro que mostrou pra mim que a ciência caminha de forma fantástica, e que muitas (se não todas) as explicações de descobertas são superhypermega simplificadas: The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

u/ad_tech · 5 pointsr/pics

I think you're sort of confusing two different mechanisms. The Hiroshima bomb, known as "Little Boy", was sort of a self-contained cannon, with half a uranium sphere at one end, and half at the other. To detonate, conventional explosives fired one half at the other.

The Nagasaki bomb, "Fat Man", had a hollow sphere of plutonium as its core. A sphere of conventional explosives surrounding it were detonated to collapse the hollow sphere into a solid sphere.

FYI, The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is an incredible book, detailing the development of the nuclear and thermonuclear bombs. It's a great read, and it won the author a Pulitzer.

u/LabKitty · 3 pointsr/askscience

> Time 0529:45. The firing circuit closed; the X-unit discharged; the detonators at thirty-two detonation points simultaneously fired; they ignited the outer lens shells of Composition B; the detonation waves separately bulged, encountered inclusions of Baratol, slowed, curved, turned inside out, merged to a common inward-driving sphere; the spherical detonation wave crossed into the second shell of solid fast Composition B and accelerated; hit the wall of dense uranium tamper and became a shock wave and squeezed, liquefying, moving through; hit the nickel plating of the plutonium core and squeezed, the small sphere shrinking, collapsing into itself, becoming an eyeball; the shock wave reaching the tiny initiator at the center and swirling through its designed irregularities to mix its beryllium and polonium; polonium alphas kicking neutrons free from scant atoms of beryllium: one, two, seven, nine, hardly more neutrons drilling into the surrounding plutonium to start the chain reaction. Then fission multiplying its prodigious energy release through eighty generations in millionths of a second, tens of millions of degrees, millions of pounds of pressure. Before the radiation leaked away, conditions within the eyeball briefly resembled the state of the universe moments after its first primordial explosion.


Richard Rhodes describing the detonation of the Trinity device.

u/philzilla · 3 pointsr/pics

Check out The Making of the Atomic Bomb -- by Richard Rhodes. If you're into science and war history, it is a fascinating read. It covers the physics discoveries from the beginning that led people to the possibility of a bomb, the Manhattan project, war-time logistics of its use, and the horrific aftermath. The accounts of what things were like right after the blasts are heartbreaking, like the pictures linked above. It is a long book, but in my opinion it is a really good read.

u/adx · 3 pointsr/books

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Good mix of science, politics and history.

u/tomparker · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

The invention of the carrot peeler would be one.

Leo Szilard's warnings of the potential of using atomic energy for military purposes back when it was entirely theoretical might be another. For a great read on this topic, check out Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes.

u/sabbott1990 · 2 pointsr/Frisson

If you're into this sort of thing I highly recommend the book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes It won the pulitzer when it came out and is the most fascinating history of any subject you'll ever read. It details the story of the a-bomb from the discovery of the atom up to the bombing of japan. It build such intensity and excitement as it goes that it's almost like experiencing a long, slow frisson trigger. Definitely worth the read.

u/lollergater · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

if you get a chance, read this book: The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
It goes into a lot more detail about CP-1 and the whole Manhattan Project. Fascinating (if long) read.

u/CoruFresh · 1 pointr/worldnews

Also check out The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which in addition to covering (obviously) the creation and deployment of the Bomb goes over the long-term effects and how the world changed forever after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

u/pvg · 1 pointr/history

No it doesn't prove anything of the sort. The original budget was not $6000, the letter Szilard convinced Einstein to write to Roosevelt about the possibility of developing an fission bomb was sent in 1939 - you don't write the president if you think you need $6000. It was clear from very early on that the project would be astronomically expensive.

Excellent book on the whole story -

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/0684813785

u/x3nopon · 1 pointr/AskReddit

The Axis powers would definitely have won. The American led bombing raids over Germany were crucial. The Russian's were able to push the Germans back because the German's could not manufacture enough weapons because of the bombing raids and because they could not commit all their troops because of fear of a 2nd front. Without American involvement, British bombers alone would not have been effective. Germany's industrial capacity would have been able to keep up with their war effort. Based on how quickly German technology was advancing, time was on their side. They would certainly have defeated the Russians with their more advanced technology, despite being outnumbered.

Of course there is always the wildcard of what nation would develop an atomic bomb first. All the nations were aware of the physics of the atomic bomb during WW2. Without American industry, Britain could never have manufactured a bomb on her own, even if she knew how. In reality, the Germans were not on the right track, but maybe in this alternate timeline they would have. The Germans had the necessary scientists, however none of them had that eurekea moment to put it all together. I can't do this justice in a post, this book has it all covered.

u/Stubb · 1 pointr/askscience

The double flash (and much, much more) is discussed in The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The book reads as well as any thriller; it's difficult to put down.

u/selfsmartedmyself · 1 pointr/books

Forget about all the haters. I'm reading this book right now, and it's fantastic. I've studied physics and also read the Richard Rhodes book, and it's a great counterpoint to a more formal history. I really, really love the chapters before he met Jean Tatlock; they're so full of little insights into his life as a "real," working physicist.

Also, my glass of scotch salutes you.