Bomb

While comprehensive in its synthesis of the political, historical, and scientific aspects of the creation of the first nuclear weapon, this account focuses on an extremely alluring angle: the spies. Sheinkin maintains the pace of a thriller without betraying history or skipping over the science; writing with journalistic immediacy, he eschews editorializing. Photos help readers organize the events and players. Bib., ind.

Incisive and exciting, Steve Sheinkin’s stellar history has the pacing of a thriller. A riveting prologue, set in 1950, plunges readers into the story as FBI agents corner Harry Gold, a spy for the Soviets and a central figure in the book. Individuals, including Norwegian resistance fighters, scientists, pilots, survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, and world leaders are fleshed out with vivid descriptions. For example, Robert Oppenheimer, a skinny, chain-smoking professor who later became technical director of the Manhattan Project, is introduced with a memorable anecdote about how he once left a date in his car at the Golden Gate Bridge to take a walk and ended up forgetting about her and going home to bed. Illuminating quotes and details bring immediacy to one extraordinary situation after another. A chapter called “Disappearing Scientists,” for instance, includes this startlingly curt job interview of a potential Los Alamos scientist: “What kind of a job?” “Can’t say. “ “Well, where is it?” “Can’t say.” “East or west?” “Sorry, my lips are sealed. Think it over and let me know in the morning.” The suspense builds as scenes of Los Alamos scientists working to overcome staggering obstacles (such as using a dental drill to repair holes in the “very unstable” plastic explosives designed to ignite the bomb’s chain reaction) are intercut with descriptions of trusted coworkers secretly delivering detailed bomb designs into the hands of Soviet spies. Particularly intriguing are German scientists’ responses to the bombing of Hiroshima. Some didn’t believe the Allies had a “real atomic bomb.” Otto Hahn, the scientist whose discovery of fission had made the weapon possible, was completely shattered and felt he was to blame: “I thank God on my bended knees that we did not make the uranium bomb,” he said. Sheinkin concludes this important work by directly addressing readers with a powerful statement: “It’s a story with no end in sight. And, like it or not, you’re in it.”

While comprehensive in his synthesis of the political, historical, and scientific aspects of the creation of the first nuclear weapon, Sheinkin focuses his account with an extremely alluring angle: the spies. The book opens in 1950 with the confession of Harry Gold -- but to what? And thus we flash back to Robert Oppenheimer in the dark 1930s, as he and readers are handed another question by the author: “But how was a theoretical physicist supposed to save the world?” Oppenheimer’s realization that an atomic bomb could be created to use against Nazi Germany is coupled with the knowledge that the Germans must be working from the same premise, and the Soviets are close behind. We periodically return to Gold’s ever-deepening betrayals as well as other acts of espionage, most excitingly the two stealth attacks on occupied Norway’s Vemork power plant, where the Germans were manufacturing heavy water to use in their own nuclear program. As he did in the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner The Notorious Benedict Arnold (rev. 1/11), Sheinkin here maintains the pace of a thriller without betraying history (source notes and an annotated bibliography are exemplary) or skipping over the science; photo galleries introducing each section help readers organize the events and players. Writing with journalistic immediacy, the author eschews editorializing up through the chilling last lines: “It’s a story with no end in sight. And, like it or not, you’re in it.” Index. roger sutton