This book certainly deserves all the accolades it's earned! Sheinkin has produced a nonfiction page turner that is equal parts thriller, suspense, and action/adventure. The book interweaves into a cohesive whole several stories centered around the making of the atomic bomb: the scientists who developed the bomb technology, the spies desperate to steal it, the European resistance fighters who sabotaged Germany's bomb production, and the U.S. government's ultimate use of this new super weapon. Sheinkin is particularly effective in describing how the creation of the atomic bomb forever changed future war and global politics. We have never known a world without nuclear weapons, and often take them for granted as a fact of life. However, Sheinkin eerily recreates the atmosphere of dawning horror as scientists realized what they had unleashed, and total nuclear war became a possibility. I've never read something that's made me feel the magnitude of this momentous turning point in history so fully before. While I wouldn't recommend thinking about the implications of the atomic bomb all the time because it would probably reduce you to a quivering puddle of jello hiding under your bed, it's good to remember that atomic weaponry wasn't always the norm, and the dark paths that our own hubris can lead us down. Highly recommend!
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March 2015
Categories"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." |