Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the World’s
Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin
Nonfiction; 226 pages
Recounts the scientific discoveries that enabled atom splitting, the military intelligence operations that occurred in rival countries, and the work of brilliant scientists hidden at Los Alamos.
Sam’s review:
This book guarantees that readers will not connect “nonfiction” with “boring.” From the opening pages, Sheinkin grabs the reader with the promise of speeding from “secret labs to commando raids to street-corner spy meetings.” It turns out that this opening line undersells the action and intrigue of the story of the bomb. The story follows three central threads: the race to build the bomb in the United States (the top secret Manhattan Project led by Robert Oppenheimer), the struggle to sabotage the progress of the Germans to build the bomb, and the efforts of the Soviets to steal the work of the Manhattan Project. Each of these stories involves colorful characters that are absolutely fascinating to explore. My favorite is the commando raids of the rugged Norwegians led by Knut Haukelid. They had to knock out a German facility in Norway’s high wilderness built into a cliff. It could have been right out of a James Bond book. Besides being a relentless action-adventure, the story also includes basic explanations of the process of making the bomb and shows how the scientists were so focused on defeating Hitler that they did not realize the wider consequences of their work until after the war. The searing, terrifying reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is sobering. Sheinkin ends by reminding us that the story of the bomb is one with “no end in sight. And, like it or not, you’re in on it.”