Pandora's Keepers
Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
The author of Road to Disaster"[examines] the thoughts, feelings, and judgments of these nine men who created the first weapon of mass destruction" (The Boston Globe).
There were nine of them—Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi, Bohr, Lawrence, Bethe, Rabi, Szilard, and Compton—men who believed in science and who saw before anyone else did the awesome workings of an invisible world.
They came from many places, some fleeing Nazism in Europe, others quietly slipping out of university teaching jobs, all gathering in secret wartime laboratories to create the world's first atomic bomb. At one such place hidden away in the mountains of northern New Mexico—Los Alamos—they would crack the secret of the nuclear chain reaction and construct a device that incinerated a city and melted its victims so thoroughly that the only thing left was their scorched outlines on the sidewalks. During the war, few of the atomic scientists questioned the wisdom of their desperate endeavor. But afterward, they were forced to deal with the sobering legacy of their creation. Some were haunted by the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and would become anti-nuclear weapons activists; others would go on to build bigger and even deadlier bombs. Some would remain friends; others would become bitter rivals and enemies.
In explaining their lives and their struggles, Brian VanDeMark superbly illuminates the ways in which these brilliant and sensitive men came to terms with their horrific creation. The result is spectacular history and a moral investigation of the highest order.
"Depicts the friendships forged among the fascinating and sometimes perturbing scientists as they struggled to come to grips with the implications of making the annihilating weapon." —Booklist (starred review)
"A welcome addition to the literature of the atomic age." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the subtitle suggests, this is a biography of a scientific generation, treating the nine men who built the atom bomb and how each of them grappled with the implications of their awesome creation. The story of the Manhattan Project is famous, and so are the complicated, remarkable men behind it, whom VanDeMark, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and coauthor of Robert S. McNamara's bestseller, In Retrospect, brings engrossingly to life: men like Oppenheimer, Bethe, Bohr, Teller, Fermi and Szilard. But VanDeMark says he is interested in the human rather than the scientific story: a tale of moral ambiguity in "an imperfect world that sometimes forges good from evil and evil from good." The author tackles his subject in two parts. The first treats the "frenzy of creation" that took on a life of its own, and how, when their work was done, the scientists involved "came to fear the very thing they had built to end fear." The book's second part addresses the rude awakening of the atomic scientists, who had previously lived in the detached, rarefied world of academia, to the moral implications of their contribution for world politics. VanDeMark does not overlook its implications in today's world, questioning the viability of deterrence when "fanatics, driven by zealotry that knows no ethical constraints" may gain access to nuclear weapons. He concludes that "there is hope," but not all readers will find hope in his statement that we must rely on good sense to avoid disaster. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
