Customer Reviews

Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book if you are a scientist, particularly if you are a physicist. This is a technical history of the Manhattan project at it relates to the work done at Los Alamos Lab leading to the first atomic explosions. You'll learn the fine details of the work as a scientist would recount them. You'll be amazed at the limited knowledge and instrumentation available at the time!!! You'll be surprised by the methods used to get things done in time! And you will be impressed by the

schedules and the accomplishments made in those years of hard -and we are told in details how and why it was hard- work!

If you have worked at a National Lab (and even if you haven't) you'll understand how the concept of the national laboratory came about by understanding the work in the early days of Los Alamos involving a fine interplay between the scientific, the engineering and the programmatic thrusts.

Recommending this book seems like an understatement. If you are a physicist, a chemist, a mathematician, a computer scientist you want to read this book and understand how they did it!

The only thing that could be improved in this book is possibly including a few diagrams. I am not sure whether that is because they might still be classified, but they must exist the archives at Los Alamos. And adding a diagram here and there would certainly be helpful to the reader. If there had to be a revised edition, that's where improvement could find a home.

I'd challenge the team that wrote this book to tackle other successes such as the history of Fermilab or SLAC for example. And not to shy away from a tougher one -not a success story- the history of the failed SSC project. Use some of that insight and record in a similar manner how science, engineering and a really fine mission (not equaled in the latter half of this century) sadly failed that time around...

Without doubt, this is the finest account of the technical aspects of the race to produce an atomic weapon at Los Alamos before the end of WWII. As other reviewers have noted, you don't need a degree in physics to read this book; however, you do need endurance.

"Critical Assembly" is a plodding, straightforward, chronological narrative of how talent and materials came together to make a bomb; a techno-nerd's dream. There is no attempt to delve into politics and ethics, make the characters "come alive" with interesting personal glimpses, or place it all in historical perspective. For that you need Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb."

Still, the authors did not write "Critical Assembly" to be a riveting historical novel soon to be a blockbuster movie. For technical information, it is the best single book available. To understand why anyone would care how the atomic bomb was made, let alone plod through the technical details, read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" first.

This book is THRILLING in the scope and depth of its description of HOW the bomb was made. This was a unique historical event in that the best brains in the world, stimulated by a sense of extreem urgency and given, in effect, unlimited physical and financial resources accomplished in the space of three years somthing that in the 1930's was considered as Science Fiction.

The book is highly readable and understandable by non technical people. This book is proof that "once upon a time" we did things "Right the First Time" in this country. An outstanding historical and technical account of the "ultimate" invention.

The other review nicely describe this gem, but makes it sound like something only a scientist could understand. I'd just like to add that any intelligent person will have no trouble following this lucid account of the first two years of Los Alamos.

Very well written and does not overwhelm the reader with technical minutia. This is an excellent companion to Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and will please any student of the history of science.