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Just finished my third reading of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It really ruined most other history books for me by setting the bar so high.
by jryb 3y ago
Just finished my third reading of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It really ruined most other history books for me by setting the bar so high.
- randcraw 3y agoI'm reading Rhodes' "Energy". Now I know why Great Britain got so deforested: from heating all those drafty old castles.
- AareyBaba 3y agoYou might like the 'The Prize' by Daniel Yergin on the history of petroleum and which also won the Pulitzer Prize.
- marai2 3y agoThis is the book that got me into realizing history can be so interesting. This was my first history book that I bought on my own!
- wellthisisgreat 3y agoHmm is it on par with Years Of Lyndon Johnson? Bc for me that’s the benchmark I can’t see any other history book approaching
- jryb 3y agoI haven't read it so I can't compare them. What I love about TMOTAB is that it provides so much context for what historical events were informing the scientists, politicians and military leaders at the time, and it really gets into the details of nuclear chemistry (starting from before the turn of the century!), the course of the war, and all the policy decisions that were made and why. The many influences of the first world war. The efforts of individuals as well as of nations. You see the entire project at multiple scales, and it also gets into the German and Japanese nuclear weapons programs (which I didn't even know existed until I read the book). It doesn't just describe the debate about dropping the bomb - it details the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo and other cities from the perspective of the survivors, the crews of the bombers as well as the leaders who ordered the bombings. It describes the resistance of the Japanese at Iwo Jima and other battles which cemented the belief that invading the Japanese homeland would be a bloodbath. And the chapter about the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombs as told by contemporary accounts is gutting. Even this description is completely omitting a huge part of the book. It's a 53 hour audiobook with zero fluff.
- mskalski 3y agoI am reading it now too and i enjoy it a lot. Drawing the dots between all of those science discovery, which led to conduct chain reaction, compressing it to almost suspenseful, detective story and decorate it with events in which the whole world and individual people lived was great achievement of the author.
- kiernanmcgowan 3y agoI finished his fourth book Twilight of the Bombs earlier this year - a great look at nuclear proliferation at the fall of the Cold War and how it shaped many US foreign policy decisions.
- jebarker 3y agoThree readings of such a massive book is quite an endorsement!