An important historical document that is a delightful story of unforgetable personalities ,

books:


	• The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses and Historians. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Highly recommended

A perfect way to become familiar with that famous enterprise which changed the world. In just about two years the Manhattan Project, starting with the basic knowledge about nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium, managed to produce the atomic bombs that ended World War II. The effort was gigantic, involving several hundred thousand people and billions of dollars, conducted in absolute secrecy, at the height American involvement in the war effort. This book uses short abstracts from many sources to describe the Manhattan Project's origins, its activities at centers throughout the country, the dropping of the bombs on Japan, and the impact that atomic energy has had on the world even to this day. A highly recommended source for all things related to the Manhattan Project.

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great documentary on the making of the a-bomb and its aftermath

I am a babyboomer, born in 1947 after World War II was over. But my father had worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground during World War II and entered the nuclear filed after the war becoming a reactor theorist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. So the Manhattan Project and many of the physcists associated with it along woth the post-war movement for peaceful development of nuclear energy became a natural part of my life. This book tells the story about how men like Einstein, Szilard, Bohr the British scientists and British intelligence made discoveries about nuclear energy and the potential for nuclear chain reactions to recognize the potential for the development of a superbomb by the Nazis. After Einstein's letter to Rossevelt, cooperation between the US and Britian and the birth of the Manhattan Project began shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The plants at Hanford and Oak Ridge and the research lab at Los Alamos became the key sites for the project. The book shows how the leadership of Groves and Oppenheimer lead to the rapid development of the bomb over a two year period and as the Nazi were defeated how the goal shifted from the urgency of beating the Germans to the development of a bomb to question of whether to use it on Japan to put a quicker end to the war in Japan.

The book tells the story of the lives of the key figures during this time with Oppenheimer and Groves playing the biggest role. But it also relates many facts and opinions out through the highly classified writings and documents of the period that are now public information.

We learn about security, espionage, difficult decisions and controversy. A lot of interesting discussion is presented about the varying views of Truman's decision to drop the bomb on Japan. Was it really to shorten the war and save lives of the allied forces or might it have been intended to cut the war short before a Soviet invasion.

The post-war desire to control nuclear weapons and to harness the power for peaceful purposes is cover in the last two chapters of the book. It includes Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" speech to the United Nations and goes on to present interesting writings about disarmament and the post-cold war threat from small nations like Pakistan and North Korea. The writings of Gorbachev about the meetings with Reagan in Iceland was very enlightening and interesting.

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Total Destruction

The Manhattan Project is a excellent book on the making of the world's first atomic bomb. From J.Robert Oppenheimer to Paul Tibbits, this book covers the people who invented the bomb,delivered the "gadget", to the horrible aftermath. The last chapter covers the reflections from the people involved---from apprehension to justification, this book covers all angles to make this book a fair-balanced account of August 6, 1945.The Atomic Bomb Collection This DVD collection offers many atomic bomb explosions--awesome showing of raw power and destruction.

How to build an atomic bomb

It is just amazing how much declassified material is available to the public at large. The Manhattan Project is an excellent compilation of previously published material and interview with the many scientists who participated in the development of the A Bomb. While book is full of excepts from other books on the subject, it is put together in such a way as to provide a quick read on the subject. Many of the documents contain technical information that I had not previously been aware of. That we, as America, could develop such a complex infrastructure to extract U235 and Plutonium is truly amazing.

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An important historical document that is a delightful story of unforgetable personalities ,

One of the things we want history books to do for us is to give us insight into a world now gone. As we look back on puzzles solved, technologies developed, hardware built--it's hard to recreate the mood when all these challenges lay ahead, and the future was far from certain. How did the people involved view the strange new technology they were creating? This book brings us in their own words, their hopes, their doubts, their fears, their triumphs.

This is not a new approach. Many history books are collections of documents wherein key players describe events or ponder their significance. But Cindy Kelly brings creativity and a deep knowledge of the history and its players, to combine little-known letters and papers with current interviews and brief contemporary notes, to give variety, sparkle and intimacy to this very human story of vast and earth-shaking developments that require our understanding in order to deal intelligently with current events.

We watch, fascinated, as these scientists and engineers work to change the world, while the new world they are creating inexorably changes them.

This book is a unique, factual historical document and, at the same time, a delightfully personal story. A perfect Christmas present.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Born out of a small research program that began in 1939, the Manhattan Project brought together the cream of the scientific community and the military to create and perfect a weapon more powerful than any the world had known. Racing against time as the war raged in Europe and Asia, and against our enemies, whom we feared were pursuing similar ends, the Project would eventually employ more than 125,000 people and cost a total of over $2 billion?and the entire operation was conducted under a shroud of secrecy, at remote sites around the country.

This groundbreaking book?the first of its kind?collects the writings and thoughts of the original participants in the Manhattan Project, along with pieces by the most important historians and interpreters of the subject. It is a rich and comprehensive compilation of documents, essays, articles, and excerpts from histories, biographies, plays, novels, letters, oral histories, and more, and is the freshest, most multi-faceted exploration yet of the topic. Including material by and about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Leslie Groves, Klaus Fuchs, Henry Stimson, Vannevar Bush, Harry S. Truman, Niels Bohr, and many other key figures, it also collects the writings and testimony of those in the trenches at the Project, their families, and local eyewitnesses. Finally, the book includes thoughts and concerns about the bomb, set down in the aftermath of its deployment, by politicians, writers, artists, and others who saw that the world would never again be the same.

Assembled with authority and care by the president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation?in cooperation with a team of advising historians that included the Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Rhodes?The Manhattan Project is an invaluable addition to the historical record as well as a gripping narrative of scientific discovery, military strategy, and moral reflection.

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