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Reminiscences of Los Alamos 1943-1945 (Studies in the History of Modern Science)

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Before Richard Rhodes and his The Making of the Atomic Bomb there was Larry Badash. I was in his class, and we used Jungk's book Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists and others. Larry had an incredibly long reading list which got shortened by students over time. Larry was teamed with Joe Hirschfelder and Herb Broida to get their colleagues still alive from Los Alamos together for their oral history. We had fantastic dinner conversations afterward. Larry was the last of the three to have died. We should have taken more photographs of this event.

This collection by the people who were there was assembled at a time when the field of history was just awakening to the facts that there was history being made all around us and it wasn't just something happening in the past.

Joe, Herb (and Larry indirectly) also opened my eyes to the political games played by big universities to get talented and gifted faculty to visit a campus on sabbaticals or in retirement. The result of some of this action was the creation of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. Yeah, lots of profs are "dirty old men". OK, well maybe at least lecherous.

The results of this lecture series ranged much further and wider than anyone otherwise reading a description of this book. The most important lecture to most people was Richard Feynman's "Los Alamos from Below" which went on to make Section 2 of his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). Not all of the text made it into both works. The actual lecture is recorded on a CD version Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character: this is the version to get if you want to hear Dick's voice. This particular lecture had a later personal consequence 4 years later when I would date one of the women his family used to baby sit. If one has never heard Dick's voice, this is comparative evidence to both the disadvantages as well as advantages of a copy editor.

Other lectures have their memorable moments. Every one wanted to hear about Fermi from Laura Fermi. Kistiakowsky gave his tree clearing shaped charge talk. and so forth. Every one remembers Oppie, fewer people ever heard of Norris Bradbury who replaced him (I should add something to wikipedia).

It is an academic book, so be warned. The class saved me from taking Western Civ or US History (already had in public schools) for general education requirements in college. No pictures. No math.