The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes · 1986
Rhodes's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Manhattan Project is simultaneously the best science history and the best war history ever written. He follows both the physics and the human beings who created the weapon with equal mastery, resulting in a book about the most important scientific achievement in history.
The case against
Three hundred pages of physics history pass before anyone breaks ground at Los Alamos; you earn the bomb the way the scientists did, through Rutherford, Bohr, and the neutron. Rhodes extends more tenderness to the physicists than to their targets until the Hiroshima chapter arrives like an ambush. At nine hundred pages, this is a season of your reading life.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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