Customer Reviews

The Bomb: A Life

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"The Bomb: A Life" is a highly readable history of nuclear weapons, from the Manhattan Project through the end of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear terrorism. I picked the book up on a whim and soon found that DeGroot's style kept me turning the pages.

DeGroot's book is a fairly high level overview of the development of the atomic bomb and its even more horrific successor, the hydrogen bomb. It also explores the challenges of integrating these earthshaking weapons into military and political doctrine, with a special emphasis on the formative period of the 1950s and early sixties.

But "The Bomb" is more than just a military or geopolitical history. Degroot gives equal time to domestic developments provoked by the Bomb, such as disarmament movements, the grim fate of "downwinders," and artifacts of bomb-driven cultural history like Bert the Turtle, "Dr. Stangelove," Doomtown, "The Day After," and the Doomsday Clock. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is its description of the interplay between nuclear weapons and society--how the bomb changed culture, and how culture responded by changing the bomb.

DeGroot is an equal opportunity critic, and he muses about both the excesses of nuclear warriors and the quixotic struggles of those who pressed for disarmament. In the end, he demurs--"a final verdict on the Bomb is impossible."

If you are looking for a readable overview of the development and cultural impact of nuclear weapons, "The Bomb: A Life" is a good and sobering place to start.

This capsule history is a mix of material derived from official histories interespersed with personal recollection. The author covers an enormous span of material with reasonable succces. New to American readers are the insights into the developmentof the British bomb. An otherwise readable account is marred by numerous mistakes which detract from the credibility of the rest of the book.
The book is a nice one-time read.

This is the story of how a scientific discovery that holds the promise of unlimited benefits was exploited to provide the threat of unlimited destruction.

Gerard DeGroot describes the American World War II development efforts and examines the perceived threat of a German weapon that was the principle concern. He covers the Manhattan project and the contributors, Szilard, Groves, Oppenheimer, and the rest. DeGroot describes Werner Heisenberg's efforts to put together a bomb project, "For the rest of his life he was tormented by a need to prove that he had taken a moral stand against the Bomb, and an equally consuming need to prove that he could build one." The discussion is more about the motivations of the scientists and decision makers rather than technical detail. The book's examination of Soviet reactions to the American efforts starts with questions on how much to tell Stalin and what dropping the bomb will mean for post-war confrontations.

DeGroot explains the evolution from fission to fusion weapons, Edward Teller's desire for control, and Soviet reactions as the cold war settles over the second half of the century. He discusses the early tests in the Pacific, Siberia, and Nevada Test Site along with the tragic consequences to inhabitants. He points out the advantages the Soviet's had in spying, gaining information from the very beginning, particularly from Klaus Fuchs, while giving little away.

The author looks at social and cultural effects, in terms of movies, civil defense programs and even Miss Atomic Bomb contests in Las Vegas. Political topics include the "missile gap" and the various treaty initiatives. DeGroot includes coverage of anti-nuclear sentiment such as when "protestors at the Women's Peace Camp expressed their displeasure . . . by hanging soiled sanitary napkins and tampons on the perimeter fence of the American missile base."

Some errors in details are annoying. For example: the U.S. Air Force became an independent service in 1947, not 1946; Sandia laboratory was set up for research and development not for "mass manufacture" on Kirtland Air Force Base, not "Kirkland Air Force Base".

DeGroot cites the Brooking's Institute 1998 audit of the American nuclear weapons costs of $5.8 trillion and states that the Soviet nuclear effort "had virtually bankrupted" the USSR. This work gives us starting point for thinking about the costs of the cold war for all participants and what might have played out had the Bomb never been created.

This book is easy to read and gives the reader a good undertanding of what it took to build the Atom Bomb, who were the main actors, who was responsible for key decisions, building the H- Bomb etc...
I highly recommend.

I've been looking for a concise yet informative history of nuclear weaponry for years. I've listened to both of Richard Rhodes' excellent books, but they end with the development of the bombs. This chronicles a broader history. I found it readable and fascinating. It's just what I've been waiting for.

I'm not going to quibble over the difference between "hitting" a hospital or exploding 1600 feet directly above it--the effect is the same. This is written by a Briton, but he is definitely not a unilateral disarmament lefty. He makes no judgement about whether it was right or wrong to use the bomb on Japan. I suspect that he, like I do, believes that it was simply inevitable.

If you want a concise, readable, and informative history of nuclear weapons, you will be pleased with this book.

This is a political and military history of a weapon. If you were hoping for a story of the scientific and engineering achievements, there is some but coverage is patchy. If this is about the "life" of the bomb, it is from the perspective of the parents, their hopes and dreams for their child and their disappointments when he/she did not quite turn out as expected, and gave them terrible troubles along the way. There is not enough of the fascinating insight from the child's own (i.e. those responsible for the development, manufacture and delivery) point of view, which I think leaves it lacking.

There is also at least one huge omission. The development of ballistic missiles is almost completely ignored, and suddenly appears without warning half way through. The ICBM turned the bomb from a devastating yet slow to deliver and therefore compromised weapon, into an terrifying and virtually invincible one. That achievement, thanks in large parts to Nazi engineers such as Werner von Braun, was just as great as the development of fission and fusion explosives, and of course gave rise to the space race which was an equally nationalistic, frenetic and expensive contest between Americans and the Soviets. De Groot has also written a negative history of the moon landing programme which I have not read, but as a child I was fascinated with the Apollo programme and was utterly inspired by the technology and the adventure. I wanted to be an astronaut. Prof. De Groot must have had a dull childhood and I feel sorry for him!

I actually enjoyed his comical description of the British efforts to develop a bomb and their cliched attitude to all things - this is probably rather inaccurate and offensive to those who worked on it, but I chuckled anyway.

The book is nonetheless a rewarding read, but I also must agree with other reviewers who have commented on de Groot's modern anti-bomb stance, the confusion of his own opinion with the historical facts and his criticism of the imperative to finish WWII in a way that made perfect sense at the time.

The combination of subject matter and readable presentation held my attention for the 2 days I spent reading the entire work nonstop. For the record, I am an engineer whose reading habits (outside of techincal) are light.

I enjoyed the focus on details and the brevity of personal comment, which was bascially pointing out the absurdity of specific decisions & actions, in case you hadn't already noticed.

In terms of history, I enjoyed learning about the transition from WWII to the Cold War, with emphasis placed on answering the "why didn't we use the Bomb?" question with common sense while reviewing previously top-secret information as well as (then) popular culture.

The primary strength of this work is presenting otherwise stand-alone major events into a continuous story.

Frightening is how close the Nazis came to developing the Bomb.

All the while, DeGroot drops juicy tidbits of trivia to keep the attention span refreshed (which otherwise have only a minor effect on the big picture).

This book can (and will, for me) serve as a comprehensive launching point for further study into the history of the Bomb.

A good amount of review and comment on current events is also included.

Gerard J. DeGroot's "The Bomb: A Life" is one of the best single-volume histories I've read about the development of the atomic bomb and the effects the new weapon had on the world. In a conversational, highly readable style, DeGroot strikes a nearly perfect balance between describing the "nuts and bolts" of how nuclear weapons work and covering the political, military, moral and ethical issues associated with their development.

Well-organized chapters focus on specific aspects of "the bomb" during the Cold War. The Manhattan Project, the Trinity test and the use of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" at Hiroshima and Nagasaki receive considerable attention, making up about the first third of the book. Development of the thermonuclear "Super," a weapon orders of magnitude more powerful than the original Trinity bomb, is covered in detail from both the political perspective ("SHOULD we make it?") and the technical perspective ("CAN we make it?"). DeGroot tells about American nuclear testing in the Pacific and in Nevada, and the harmful health effects the tests had on nearby inhabitants despite Government assurances that the resulting radiation and fallout were nothing to be concerned about. He covers in detail nuclear weapon development in the Soviet Union, and, in slightly less detail, the programs in Britain, France and China. Those who lived through the Cold War will (fondly?) reminisce as DeGroot describes "duck and cover" drills, "Bert the Turtle" and fallout shelters, as well as "pop culture" music and movie references to nuclear weapons, in a chapter entitled "How We Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

Purist history students may be put off by the fact that DeGroot tends to inject his own opinions into the story, either directly or subtly. For example, "Like the elaborate exercises in the Nevada desert, American civil defence was a carefully stage-managed performance designed to pull the wool over the people's eyes." He also has an endearing way of couching the most serious subjects in humorous terms. For example, American civil defense survival projections were over-optimistic because they assumed that people would be together in their homes when the attack came. DeGroot writes, "A really cooperative enemy would time missiles to coincide with when the meal was done, the dishes tidied away and the family gathered around the television watching `Leave It To Beaver.'" I found the irreverence in "The Bomb: A Life" very refreshing. It does not in any way detract from the quality and importance of this comprehensive but manageable history of the Cold War.

Everything about the events that led to making of it and the events that led to sustaining the nuclear programme has been written very well. This one book says everything about the bomb !

Gerard J. DeGroot promises the story of the nuclear weapon, "this once unimaginable weapon." What he delivers is a litany of every left-wing myth and distortion coupled with a politically correct, revisionist view of history that has the bad guys wearing the white hats.

Anyone disagreeing with the author's view is labeled, in one way or another, as a right-wing fanatic. DeGroot for example claims that "[s]ome believers in [nuclear] deterrence have taken their faith to the point of fanaticism." No such criticism is made of opponents of nuclear weaponry who have also taken their claims to the point of fanaticism. Any reasonable person recognizes that fanatics populate the fringes of any movement.

DeGroot handles Heisenberg, the German nuclear physicist, as if he were some kind of saint who single-handedly sabotaged German nuclear development to keep Hitler from having nuclear weapons. DeGroot treats Germany as if it were separate from the nation that brought the Nazi party into power by giving it a plurality of votes and whose tens of millions of citizens supported the most savage war in history with their blood and allegiance.

This is, at best, a highly arguable view of reality. DeGroot savages Gen. Leslie Groves, the organizational genius (which DeGroot reluctantly acknowledges)and paints him as a domineering military buffoon who always wanted the nuclear weapon developed as a weapon. DeGroot simply ignores the fact that creating a nuclear weapon was the point of the entire Manhattan Project. DeGroot, in keeping with politically correct academic attitudes, expresses no doubt in attributing evil to the United States in using atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is no room for argument in DeGroot's view and any opposing opinion is casually dismissed. Millions of Americans, both in the military and at home, in the aftermath of the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa didn't share DeGroot's view. Decades after the event, DeGroot appears puzzled that nearly 60% of the American public still thinks the use of atomic weapons to bring the Pacific War to a close was justified.

DeGroot often expresses his personal opinions as fact. The notes and bibliography are scanty.

Much attention is paid by DeGroot to the results of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Little detail is provided as what brought this tragedy to the Japanese homeland, such as the estimated 10 million deaths of Chinese attributed to Japanese actions. In DeGroot's world, everything must be one-sided and it is almost always the United States that is the source of all evil.

Surprisingly, however, DeGroot does level mild criticism at some aspects of the Soviet Union. He describes Beria, a human monster, as having no qualms about the use of slabe labour, nor of working men to death. He then compares Groves with Beria.

Ultimately DeGroot's work is about the perceived evil of nuclear weaponry, another arguable proposition. He claims that atom bombs were ". . . developed by scientists whose quest for discovery caused them to ignore the implications of their work." If DeGroot actually understood what he's written in his own book, he would comprehend that many of the scientists working on the American development understood that the were fighting against forces that would eliminate freedom as a concept. But DeGroot, like so many academics, doesn't quite get the real world. He can write of scientists leaving their homes in Europe as a result of German persecution, knowing that they would never see their loved ones again because they would be murdered. DeGroot doesn't see that who had nuclear weapons made a big difference.

DeGroot moans that "[t]he Bomb is a weapon which reflects the flawed nature of human beings." Well, many would argue that war and conflict is ingrained in human nature, though DeGroot apparently tolerates no opposition to his views. (Say, isn't that evidence of a flawed nature?)

Ultimately, "The Bomb" is pop history and a history of the pop culture that has spread around the concept of nuclear weaponry. There are solid arguments on both sides of the issue, though only one side predominates here,which is not a characteristic of the writing of a true historian.

DeGroot does include a lot of detail about the development of nuclear weapons from theory to implementation in the United States and Soviet Union. (One of my heartiest laughs came when DeGroot describes China as being a "non-aligned" nation. In order to pursue development of nuclear weapons, Mao exported most of China's rice crop leading to the starvation of millions of Chinese. DeGroot says nothing of this death toll, hundreds of times greater than that at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Likewise DeGroot says nothing of "non-aligned" China's willingness to absorb hundreds of millions dead in a nuclear war, convinced that China and its Soviet Union ally would survive. DeGroot has some interesting blind spots, it seems.)

DeGroot, it seems to me, is the a "kumbaya" kind of person: everything would be fine if we could all just get along. But Utopian ideals don't fit well with writing what could have been a fine, highly detailed objective and well-documented history of one of the most startling developments in human history. DeGroot may have wanted to write such a history, but he was unable to rise above his own bias.

Jerry