It is a noble and a sad and a horrific and a beautiful book all at once and it deserved all of the awards (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award) it won.

Moreover, Wigner’s remark – “we are all doomed” – is thematically appropriate, because this is not simply a book about a scientific achievement, but about the terrible consequences of those achievements. In my mind's eye, like a waking dream, I could still see the tongues of fire at work on the bodies of men.”

Discover the Key Moments of Each Year of World War II

One of the best parts about this book is that it also focuses a lot on the people involved with the original scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. This book by Jennet Conant also talks about many of the families who lived in Santa Fe during the war. Most of these characters are friends and family to the scientists working on the project. The book's weakest element is its occasional staccato rhythm. At times we jump from place to place, person to person, making discovery after discovery, and decision after decision with the only link being a temporal one. As if the research of Fermi in his lab in Rome and the decisions of Churchill at 10 Downing St can be juxtaposed simply because they happened on the same day.

Nevertheless, I learned a great deal from this book. And will read more about it from shorter tomes.Finally in 1942, “[Enrico] Fermi…brought to fruition all the years of discovery and experiment. Men had controlled the release of energy from the atomic nucleus. Collins, Angelo (1988). "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". The American Biology Teacher. 50 (8): 532. doi: 10.2307/4448825. JSTOR 4448825.