HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Richard Rhodes released his biography of E.O. Wilson a couple of months ago:

https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/03855...

Rhodes is famous for this book, that’s often mentioned on HN

Making of the Atomic Bomb: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451677618/

⬐ toomuchtodo

Making of the Atomic Bomb is excellent, highly recommended.

⬐ ImaCake

I can vouch for the audiobook of the biography. It is a lovely read, although I would have liked for it to be longer and have more detail. Some of the technical biology explanations could have been done better, so that could be a barrier to those less well versed in biology.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...

Richard Rhodes

He has a new book on EO Wilson

https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/03855...

I can fully recommend "The making of the atomic bomb" by Richard Rhodes[0]. The book begins with Rutherford's experiments that first indicated that an atom might have most of its mass concentrated in a tiny nucleus.

From there, it follows the intense period of scientific discovery that captivated that era. It's a fantastic portrayal of the science and the lives of people behind the discoveries.

I learnt in highschool that electrons orbit around a nucleus of protons and neutrons. I had taken these facts for granted. This book opened up the world of technical innovations, leaps of imagination and the really amazing discoveries that the smartest people of the era had to grapple with in order to come up with that model of the atom.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...

⬐ deepaksurti

The amazon link is not working. One that works. [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Richard-Rhodes-1987-02-...

If you liked American Prometheus (which I agree is fantastic), have you read Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb [1]? It's absolutely superb. It covers quite a lot of Oppenheimer's career, although the sequel, Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb, goes into more detail, not just Oppenheimer's famous trial, but also his family life and his lesser-known political work in helping form the Atomic Energy Commission.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...

Indeed, this I believe is the key insight into the stunning success of the Manhattan project. The scientists worked pretty hard as soon as uranium fission and it's details were discovered, Frisch and Peierls critically got all the fast fission concepts right in 1940, see (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisch%E2%80%93Peierls_memoran... And Frisch's story is particularly interesting, see Rhodes' book, doing Christmas vacation with his aunt, who just happened to be the first physicist her back in Germany colleague sent his results to right then.... Vs., for example, again from Rhodes' book, a clerical mixup ruining the saving throw for the German effort, the Nazi political types got invitations for the wrong seminar, one on very technical stuff instead of the pitch for atomic stuff (which, if they'd done everything right, they could have pulled off, I think).

But it took a long time to light a fire under the American authorities, and it wasn't until the absolutely critical replacement of his name is a footnote in history with Groves that things really got rolling, on the industrial scale needed, and the scientists and engineers sufficiently focused on the design and execution of the bombs themselves (which for various reasons didn't end up being the afterthought some expected). And he of course picked Oppenheimer to lead that effort, which was opposed by most, albeit he was one of the few uncommitted physicists capable at that level.

These two men organized more than 100,000 people for the industrial production of the required fissionables (90% of the work per Wikipedia), and Grove's drive got those ready in time to forestall Operation Downfall. Heck, they went from the first real test to putting metal on target in 21 and 24 days....

And the design and fabrication of "the bomb" turned out to be massively harder than they expected due to weapons grade plutonium not being suitable for a gun assembly bomb (which is also grossly wasteful of fissionable, if the Little Boy is any guide, as I recall it had 3x critical mass, and a fair amount if it wasn't as pure U-235 as they'd have wanted). Making the implosion concept work was hard, and they got it right the first time....

Read Rhode's book, especially the latter half after the nuclear physics discoveries take a back seat (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/d...) and Grove's autobiography (https://www.amazon.com/Now-Can-Be-Told-Manhattan/dp/03068018...) to learn the organization and management details, they're amazing.

And had much wider effects on the world at large, that we could indeed do such things led to the Apollo program, and of course to too much conceit that "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we [do something very different and a lot more intractable, probably without even a clearly defined goal]?"

I would start with Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb (http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Atomic-Bomb-Anniversary/dp/...). It has something for everyone, although many want to e.g. skip the initial 300 or so pages on the relevant developments in nuclear physics. And the author will sometimes go on excessively long digressions, like all about Swedish village where Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Hahn did their Christmas vacation when she was the first to get the news from her colleague back in (Nazi) Germany that uranium fissioned.

More later, or email me (check my HN profile).

⬐ noir_lord

Thanks for the response, I'll check that out :).

⬐ hga

You're very welcome.

Next book for the management of the project, although there's a lot more, e.g. Groves was responsible for US intelligence actions WRT to Germany and Japan's nuclear projects, one of the last chapters it titled something like "Destruction of the Japanese Cyclotron", is his Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project (http://www.amazon.com/Now-It-Can-Told-Manhattan/dp/030680189...).

Earlier publication date, so less could "be told", but lots of good stuff. E.g. when he first got an estimate of something major from the Chicago "Metallurgical Lab", he asked for the uncertainty factor, expecting something like 25%, and got a factor of 10. After explaining that in a neat "to feed somewhere between 10 and 1,000 people" metaphor, he then relates how they discussed it for a while, he realized there would be no firmer figure for some time, and then they all forged ahead. A truly remarkable man.

There's also a lot that's been published on Oppenheimer, but I'm not studying Los Alamos too much now, and e.g. the above book is very interesting for lots more details in how Groves picked him, and reexamined it in late 1944 or so because of Oppenheimer's relatively poor health and still couldn't find a replacement (as noted by Rhodes, if Oppenheimer had lived just a bit longer he ought to have gotten a Nobel for his earlier and way ahead of it's times late '30s theoretical astronomy on topics like neutron stars and black holes).

I'm in the middle of the Manhattan Project section in this much more specialized book, which has a political science analysis focus that's not going to be of interest to most of us, but it's quite promising, the railway story is neat and feeds right into Germany's physics establishment story; check back with me in a few weeks to see if it's worth your while: Technology and International Transformation: The Railroad, the Atom Bomb, and the Politics of Technological Change (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0791468682) the cheapest copy is now $19 (plus shipping), vs. the $3 I got it for, so it's very possibly not worth it.

I've also got these books on order: The General and the Bomb: A Biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0396087612) and suggested from the previous book The Atomic Scientists: A Biographical History (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471504556) which might be interesting if you really like the first 300 pages of Rhodes' book.

If anyone is interested in the biography of the Manhattan Project in general, including much of the goings-on at Los Alamos, I really must recommend Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Atomic-Bomb-Anniversary/dp/...)

It's an excellent read, cover-to-cover. One of the few assigned books I read with excitement while in undergrad.

⬐ omerhj

I'm in the middle of his 1996 follow up book, "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...).

The book details the Soviet nuclear program, as well as the truly massive amount of espionage that was going on at the various locations of the Manhattan project.

⬐ matthewmcg

Or, in Apple keynote style: "Richard Rhodes has introduced the best account of the development of the atomic bomb, a top-notch biography of the greatest minds of the 20th century, and a terrific summary of early-mid 20th century physics. These are NOT three separate books--this is one book, and he's calling it The Making of the Atomic Bomb."

⬐ jewbacca

If you're already familiar with Manhattan Project histories, check out "Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall" (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Uranium-Club-Secret-Recordings...), by physicist Jeremy Bernstein.

It's an account of the German nuclear programs, with the centrepiece being a curated set of transcripts from secret recordings of the candid conversations of a group of German scientists detained after the war.

Some vaguely YC-ish lessons on how their failure to produce could be attributed in many ways to seemingly mundane organizational structures that were debatably inherent to Nazi German society and internal politics.

Also some borderline pornographic payoff when they find out about Hiroshima. At the time, they were convinced they were 10 years ahead of anyone else, and were being detained as a prelude to being showered with honours and put in place to bring American and British science into the modern age. Then they set about convincing themselves they failed on purpose for moral reasons.

Also http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Atomic-Bomb-Anniversary/dp/...

The science was so good that I got a bad grade on my History class paper, because I focused too much on the science and not so much on the "storytelling" of history. Which apparently puts me in good company slongside Knuth :-)

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" http://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp... is a fantastic book for anybody in a technical field. It describes in precise detail how a team of scientists, materials engineers, and government came together to make possible something that started as theoretical physics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves were a fascinating team, Oppenheimer being a physicist and Groves an Army general.

A must for anyone in technical management.

⬐ lobster_johnson

Its sequel, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb [1] is also great. It deals with Edward Teller's hydrogen bomb, the nuclear spies (Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, etc.), the beginning of the cold war, Oppenheimer's ambitious attempts at atomic regulation, and his subsequent trial. TMAB stands out, however; it is superb in its panoramic, often lyrical depiction of science and philosophy coming together in a broad cast of scientists. Much of Dark Sun is about spies, cops and military figures, and its subject matter is somewhat more prosaic.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...

I read Command and Control in the span of a week (fast for me) over the Christmas holiday the other month, and it was enlightening (read: scary as hell that we for the most part lucked out not having a nuclear dead zone in the middle of the USA at this point in time).

One thing I did take away: the military kept using more extreme and dangerous measures (mainly in my mind the fully loaded bombers circling 24x7 over Europe) with the military trying to install fail-deadly mission objectives (ie: circle Europe for your daily bombing run, and if you don't hear an all clear message, assume the USA is being attacked and bomb the Soviet Union). One point seemed to be made though was: for all of the idiocy and lack of control during the arms race there were no actual nuclear detonations, so were the weapons at the time actually safe (even though many improved safety mechanisms were ignored by the military), or was it just luck due to small-enough sample size and a luckily short enough time span?

I actually ordered off of Amazon these two books cited by Schossler and just received them in the last two weeks and am really looking forward to reading them:

The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes:

~900 page book that is supposed to be the seminal book about the history of the bomb; also is apparently very detailed in the physics of the endeavor which should be very interesting.

http://amzn.com/1451677618

American Prometheus - Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin (this just arrived at my house yesterday actually):

~700 pages and the definitive biography of Robert J. Oppenheimer:

http://amzn.com/0375412026

⬐ arethuza

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes is the follow up to The Making of the Atomic Bomb and is even more interesting as it tells the story of the Soviet bomb project at the same time as the US H-bomb project:

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...