Customer Reviews

The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses and Historians.

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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.

When I added this book to my Christmas list I must have skimmed over the part about it being just a compilation of other writer's work. Upon receiving it, I anxiously opened the book looking forward to a story describing the history of the Manhattan Project. Instead, I found, a mildly disjointed compilation of excerpts from books, articles, and official reports. Honestly, I have nobody but myself to blame for not reading the book description. Having said that, I can't really recommend this book. I'm giving it three stars only because it does contain real factual information (it doesn't get more real than regurgitating other people's work). On the whole it was a boring read. The last section on the world after the bomb was particularly boorish in it's heavy emphasis on revisionist and apologist history on the use of the bomb against Japan.

The Manhattan Project is a wonderful compendium of personal accounts and anecdotes not readily available otherwise. The accounts come from people in all walks of Manhattan Project life. If you are a Manhattan Project buff, as I am, you'll be fascinated by the personal glimpses into the lives of military and civilian participants, their spouses and friends--and not just the famous scientists and military leaders. I have only one caveat: if your interest in the Manhattan Project is new, or you are not already familiar with the historical and scientific details of the Project, this book is not a good place to start--read Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." This book is a collage of little insights into the personal lives of the Project's participants; it is not a detailed, chronological military or scientific history. However, for those steeped in the Manhattan Project, it is a treasure.

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.

The first stop for anyone wanting to learn about the Manhattan Project is (and quite possibly always will be) Richard Rhodes' Pulitzer-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb. For most people, that tome will completely sate their curiosity.

For the insatiable minority that remains, this book is marvellous. Anyone thinking of writing a book with a title like this has to avoid duplicating the work of Mr. Rhodes. Cynthia Kelly simply presents some of the original source material, stitched together with a minimum of analysis, and with an introduction added by Rhodes himself.

It's also a complement to the excellent documentary The Day After Trinity. One of the main narrators in the video, Robert Serber, describes their hilariously-futile attempts to sow disinformation around the gin goints of Santa Fe. In the book here we get the same story told from his wife's viewpoint, to great effect.

The book doesn't use rose-coloured glasses: it adequately covers the rather shoddy treatment of Oppenheimer after the war, but it does skimp on some areas that I would like to see more about, like Oppenheimer's rather shoddy treatment of his one-time friend Haakon Chevalier. And it also spends exactly two pages going into one of the few areas of the whole story that perhaps still deserves a volume to itself: the very long delay between Einstein's letter to FDR explaining that the Germans were probably working on an atomic bomb (August 1939), and Vannevar Bush's letter to FDR announcing the Project finally at "full speed" (March 1942). Eugene Wigner describes the early days of the project as like "swimming in syrup." Leo Szilard estimates that unnecessary delays delayed the project for at least a year. Imagine how much pain, suffering and death might have been avoided, and how different the world might be today if Little Boy, instead of being ready to drop on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, had instead been ready to drop exactly fourteen months earlier, on June 6, 1944.

But the material the book does include is first-rate. My likely next stop after this is Now It Can Be Told - the same story from the viewpoint of "the biggest S.O.B. who ever lived", Leslie Groves.

Compilation of articles by people who were involved in the a-bomb project.Its a quick easy read,while being very interesting . Young students can read this book i would say 8th grade up, but its not amied at children and adults will find it fasinating
especially the relatrionship of Groces and Openhiemer.

I was born in 1949, and although I'd heard of the Manhattan Project, had never given it a moment's thought...it was the "product" not the "process" that loomed large in my imagination. Accordingly, I adopted Cindy Kelly's book merely as a "subway companion," something to take my mind off being jostled and lurched on the way to work. But I soon became enthralled (and strange though it may seem) charmed by the tale of the making and deploying of the bomb, as told in Kelly's engrossing, skillfully-selected collection of articles and memoirs by and about the people involved and directly affected. The book provides an intimate feel for the personalities, the practical problems and the politics, and a fascinating and unbiased peek into a part of American history about which many of us know little if anything. One need not be a physicist or an atomic activist (pro or con) to find the book compelling and (again, dare I say it?) enjoyable. I have already sent the book to a few friends as birthday gifts and the like, and am compiling a list of more. I strongly suggest you give yourself a gift and read "The Manhattan Project."

It's a good read. I'm about half way through. I was originally attracted by the propect of learning more about the personalities of Oppenheimer and his peers (like Bethe, Fermi, etc.) but I now find equally engrossing the exposition on the industrial processes that were tried and developed to produce the fissionable materials (U235 and Plutonium). The anecdotes about the ordinary workers and their families were good too. - A great one is about a little boy who stood up in class and proceeded to reveal what they were making at the Hanover, WA, facility.

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.

It is always a pleasure to review a good book.

Cynthia Kelly should be complimented for her intelligent chioce of the items for this anthology. The prefaces to the chapters and the items are well written, concise, but fully povide the needed background. Even for those who are familiar with the History of the Manhattan Project, the book reads like a thriller. The last two chapters can serve as an introduction to Richard Rhodes's "Arsenls of Folly".