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The Ultimate Weapon: The Race to Develop the Atomic Bomb Hardcover – April, 2007

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Edward T Sullivan (Author)
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Wall-E meets "Hatchet" in this new illustrated middle grade novel from bestselling author Peter Brown. Hardcover | Kindle book | See more for ages 9-12
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Product Details

  • Age Range: 12 - 17 years
  • Grade Level: 7 - 12
  • Lexile Measure: 1170L (What's this?)
  • Hardcover: 182 pages
  • Publisher: Holiday House (April 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0823418553
  • ISBN-13: 978-0823418558
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 0.9 x 9.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #474,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsDr. Mary Hollowell / Teacher EDU / Clayton State University
By Mary Hollowell on January 3, 2008
Format: Hardcover
This sweeping account of the Manhattan Project during WWII sheds light on the most fearsome project in history. The book is filled with irony. In an opening photograph, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets smiles and waves from the cockpit of the Enola Gray, a bomber plane named after his mother. Tibbets was a young airman in his twenties who was chosen to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Later in the book, we learn that the rest of the crew was kept in the dark about the devastating cargo until midair. Tibbets was given cyanide tablets to use in the event of capture.

Sullivan chronicles the atomic bomb from its development to its testing to its use and aftermath. He includes some sophisticated physics. The world's first nuclear chain reaction, which took place on a squash course at the University of Chicago, a dangerous location in a major city, is clarified by including a painting of the event by Gary Sheehan. Following the successful experiment, one observer wrote that it was "a black day in the history of mankind."

Most surprising, are the size of the project sites: Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford and the speed with which they progressed. All three were in remote areas, yet Oak Ridge became the fifth largest city in Tennessee by 1945. The government cities sprang up complete with homes, schools, churches, hospitals, stores, and recreation facilities. The maps and photos of these installations are particularly interesting. The frolicking in the swimming pools and recreation halls is paradoxical to the monumentality of the work being done.

The author doesn't exclude details from his book because they are controversial.Read more ›
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2.0 out of 5 starsWhat are America's children being taught?
By Jerry Saperstein HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on August 23, 2009
Format: Hardcover
I came across this book by accident, not realizing it is intended as a text for "young adults", a euphemism for teenagers. Having read it, I am frightened by what these adolescents are being taught in America's secondary schools.

The United States of America fought in World War II and lost more than 400,000 of its sons, fathers and brothers. The nation mobilized more than thirteen million men and women in its armed forces and auxiliaries. Tens of millions more went to work voluntarily in the nation's factories and on its farms turning out everything from food to bandages to bullets and airplanes and tanks and tens of thousands of other products/ Much of this bounty was freely shared with other nations fighting the forces of fascism. After the war, the United States brought all of its troops home except for those which remains, by dint of international agreement, as protectors or, in the cases of Germany and Japan, as occupiers.

Yet, for some, the United States is an unending source of evil and this book reflects that attitude.

Yes, the United States was fortunately the first to develop nuclear weapons. The nation was also the first to deploy them against a barbarous, evil regime in order to end a horrific war.

This book, sub-titled "The Race to Develop the Atomic Bomb", barely details the immense and extraordinary effort to develop the atomic bomb before the Germans or anyone else.

Any intent to tell this fantastic story is quickly abandoned by the author.

Instead he embarks on a catalog of evils perpetrated by the United States of America and, occasionally, others such as the ostensibly misogynistic Nobel Prize Committee that failed to award a Nobel to Dr. Lise Meitner, an Austrian physicist.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsRichie's Picks: THE ULTIMATE WEAPON
By N. S. VINE VOICE on August 21, 2007
Format: Hardcover
"We love to laugh and play and run
And we would never start a war
We're all afraid of bombs and guns
We know that one fight leads to more.
Our country says we must be ready
For a fight, no matter where
Even though that might be right,
It makes the other countries scared"
--Peter Alsop, "Kid's Peace Song"

"By 2006, six nuclear weapons had been lost and never recovered."

I'm frightened. In fact, a piece of me has been frightened ever since my childhood days when I followed my teachers' instructions by watching and reading the daily news and then employed scissors and glue to complete those weekly current events assignments.

Sadly, the more I've learned over the years, the more frightened I've become.

"Using the atomic bomb against Japan unleashed a Pandora's box of consequences that haunt the world to this day. When the Soviet Union announced in 1949 that they, too, had the atomic bomb, it sparked a nuclear arms race that lasted over three decades. It consumed billions of dollars, instilled in Americans and Russians a constant fear of mutual nuclear annihilation, and in 1962 brought the Soviet Union and the United States to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the peak of the nuclear arms race, the Soviet Union and the United States combined had enough weapons to destroy the Earth hundreds of times over.
"When the Soviet Union collapsed and fragmented in the late 1980s, it appeared that the menacing cloud of global nuclear destruction that had hung over the world for so long had finally lifted. The reality is that nuclear war is more of a probability now than it ever was.Read more ›
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