Download or read book Atomic Quest written by Arthur Holly Compton and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1956 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Account of the development and use of atomic energy in America for peace and war.

Download or read book Atomic Quest a Personal Narrative by Arthur Holly Compton written by Arthur Holly Compton and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book ATOMIC QUEST A PERSONAL NARRATIVE written by A.H. COMPTON and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Atomic Quest A Personal Narrative written by Arthur Holly Compton and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As director of the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, Arthur Holly Compton was a major participant in the research, production and testing of the first atomic bombs. In this memoir, he tells the story of the bomb’s development from the presentation of the project to President Roosevelt, through its planning, research, and building phases, to its use against Japan. From the perspective of the key position he held during World War II, Compton describes the project as a large-scale group effort leveraging the knowledge and talents of numerous scientists, industrialists and administrators all working as part of their nation’s war effort. “An absorbing and eminently readable account... packed with new information, enlivened with precious detail and illuminating insights into the minds and personalities of the chief actors in the drama... Mr. Compton tells, and tells well, the story of how, with his unflagging encouragement, the brilliant team under the late Enrico Fermi brought about the first nuclear chain reaction... [an] important book.” — Henry Guerlac, The New York Times Book Review “This book... is without doubt the most authoritative source available on many aspects of the atomic bomb project... Better than in most histories the real factors underlying one of mankind’s most important developments are set forth in this work... The story is a personal one, which... gives the book a Churchillian authenticity... No historian will ever dare to neglect this volume in writing the history of World War II. It is beautifully written, carefully documented, and thoroughly interesting from cover to cover.” — W.F. Libby, Science “For those who were in the project, it will mean many recollections. For those who were not, it should give an inkling of the character and capacity of many of the individuals, including Arthur Compton, who made success possible.” — Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves, U.S. Army (Retired) “Atomic Quest is an absorbingly interesting story of the people who blazed the trail into the atomic frontier... In a lifetime filled with brilliant accomplishments, Arthur Compton’s four-year leadership in the quest for the atomic bomb was his grandest achievement... It is fortunate indeed that he returned to the fold long enough to set down in Atomic Quest a story that only he could tell.” — Richard L. Doan, American Journal of Physics “Dr. Compton is a thinking man whose reflections range far beyond the confines of his scientific work: indeed, the distinctive quality of his book lies in his ability to reconcile the atomic bomb and similar operations with his belief as a practicing Christian.” — John Barkham, Saturday Review Syndicate “It should be required reading for every American, for the free world... The narrative alone makes the book worth reading; its hopeful philosophy makes it mandatory reading.” — Robert S. Kleckner, Chicago Sunday Tribune “As... director of the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Project, Dr. Compton has an important record to add to the annals of the beginning of the Atomic Age, for his was a personal and intimate connection with it.” — Kirkus “A leading physicist’s personal account of the wartime developments in atomic energy, culminating in the production of the atomic bomb.” — Henry L. Roberts, Foreign Affairs “Informal, anecdotal, packed with behind-the-scenes incidents and impressions... arrestingly interesting.” — George W. Gray, The Saturday Review “The most controversial part of the book is that which endeavors to foresee the future of a world faced with the threat of war with nuclear weapons and the inevitable widespread destruction that will accompany their use. Compton is convinced that war has actually thereby become obsolescent.” — Robert Bruce Lindsay, Physics Today “This book... is written for the layman, in clear, everyday English... it answers the questions that have arisen in the minds of all intelligent people concerning the physical, moral, social and religious implications of the Atomic Age which was so brutally and vividly thrust upon the world in 1945.” — Paul Jordan-Smith, Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal written by Rodney P. Carlisle and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1996. Although the history of commercial-power nuclear reactors is well known, the story of the government reactors that produce weapons-grade plutonium and tritium has been shrouded in secrecy. Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal looks at the origin and development of these production reactors, Rodney Carlisle and Joan Zenzen describe a fifty-year government effort no less complex, expensive, and technologically demanding than the Polaris or Apollo programs—yet one about which most Americans know virtually nothing. Carlisle and Zenzen describe the evolution of the early reactors, the atomic weapons establishment that surrounded them, and the sometimes bitter struggles between business and political constituencies for their share of "nuclear pork." They show how, since the 1980s, aging production reactors have increased the risk of radioactive contamination of the atmosphere and water table. And they describe how the Department of Energy mounted a massive effort to find the right design for a new generation of reactors, only to abandon that effort with the end of the Cold War. Today, all American production reactors remain closed. Due to short half-life, the nation's supply of tritium, crucial to modern weapons, is rapidly dwindling. As countries like Iraq and North Korea threaten to join the nuclear club, the authors contend, the United States needs to revitalize tritium production capacity in order to maintain a viable nuclear deterrent. Meanwhile, as slowly decaying artifacts of the Cold War, the closed production reactors at Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina, loom ominously over the landscape.

Download or read book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb written by Gar Alperovitz and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-12-29 with total page 863 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new preface by the author Controversial in nature, this book demonstrates that the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Alperovitz criticizes one of the most hotly debated precursory events to the Cold War, an event that was largely responsible for the evolution of post-World War II American politics and culture.

Download or read book The War Against Japan 1941 1945 written by John J. Sbrega and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 1078 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 5,200 entries, this volume remains one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA’s fight against Japan in the Second World War. Including books, articles, and de-classified documents up to the end of 1987, the book is organized into six categories: Part 1 presents reference works, including encyclopedias, pictorial accounts, military histories, East Asian histories, hisotoriographies. Part 2 covers diplomatic-political aspects of the war against Japan. Part 3 contains sources on the economic and legal aspects of the war against Japan. Part 4 presents sources on the military apsects of the war – embracing land, air and sea forces. Religious aspects of the war are covered in Part 5 and Part 6 deals with the social and cultural aspects, including substantial sections on the treatment of Japanese minorities in the USA, Hawaii, Canada and Peru.

Download or read book Routledge Library Editions World War II in Asia written by Timothy Hall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 1752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 4 volumes in this set, originally published between 1980 and 1983, bring to light and focus on the conflict between Japan and Australia and Japan and the USA. Timothy Hall’s volumes, richly illustrated with black & white photographs, used highly contentious documents as their sources and give fascinating insights into a period of Australian history which is sometimes less than gloious. John J. Sbrega’s tour de force is not only one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA and Japan in World War 2 ever published, but it also provides invaluable information on lesser known but no less important aspects of the conflict.

Download or read book A Nuclear Winter s Tale written by Lawrence Badash and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-07-10 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise and fall of the concept of nuclear winter, played out in research activity, public relations, and Reagan-era politics. The nuclear winter phenomenon burst upon the public's consciousness in 1983. Added to the horror of a nuclear war's immediate effects was the fear that the smoke from fires ignited by the explosions would block the sun, creating an extended “winter” that might kill more people worldwide than the initial nuclear strikes. In A Nuclear Winter's Tale, Lawrence Badash maps the rise and fall of the science of nuclear winter, examining research activity, the popularization of the concept, and the Reagan-era politics that combined to influence policy and public opinion. Badash traces the several sciences (including studies of volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, and dinosaur extinction) that merged to allow computer modeling of nuclear winter and its development as a scientific specialty. He places this in the political context of the Reagan years, discussing congressional interest, media attention, the administration's plans for a research program, and the Defense Department's claims that the arms buildup underway would prevent nuclear war, and thus nuclear winter. A Nuclear Winter's Tale tells an important story but also provides a useful illustration of the complex relationship between science and society. It examines the behavior of scientists in the public arena and in the scientific community, and raises questions about the problems faced by scientific Cassandras, the implications when scientists go public with worst-case scenarios, and the timing of government reaction to startling scientific findings.

Download or read book Cultures of War Pearl Harbor Hiroshima 9 11 Iraq written by John W. Dower and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Nonfiction: The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian returns with a groundbreaking comparative study of the dynamics and pathologies of war in modern times. Over recent decades, John W. Dower, one of America’s preeminent historians, has addressed the roots and consequences of war from multiple perspectives. In War Without Mercy (1986), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he described and analyzed the brutality that attended World War II in the Pacific, as seen from both the Japanese and the American sides. Embracing Defeat (1999), winner of numerous honors including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, dealt with Japan’s struggle to start over in a shattered land in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, when the defeated country was occupied by the U.S.-led Allied powers. Turning to an even larger canvas, Dower now examines the cultures of war revealed by four powerful events—Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, and the invasion of Iraq in the name of a war on terror. The list of issues examined and themes explored is wide-ranging: failures of intelligence and imagination, wars of choice and “strategic imbecilities,” faith-based secular thinking as well as more overtly holy wars, the targeting of noncombatants, and the almost irresistible logic—and allure—of mass destruction. Dower’s new work also sets the U.S. occupations of Japan and Iraq side by side in strikingly original ways. One of the most important books of this decade, Cultures of War offers comparative insights into individual and institutional behavior and pathologies that transcend “cultures” in the more traditional sense, and that ultimately go beyond war-making alone.

Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

Download or read book Writing War in the Twentieth Century written by Margot Norris and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century will be remembered for great innovation in two particular areas: art and culture, and technological advancement. Much of its prodigious technical inventiveness, however, was pressed into service in the conduct of warfare. Why, asks Margot Norris, did violence and suffering on such an immense scale fail to arouse artistic and cultural expressions powerful enough to prevent the recurrence of these horrors? Why was art not more successful--through its use of dramatic, emotionally charged material, its ability to stir imagination and arouse empathy and outrage--in producing an alternative to the military logic that legitimates war? Military argument in the twentieth century has been fortified by the authority of the rationalism that we attribute to science, Norris argues. Warfare is therefore legitimized by powerful discourses that art's own arsenal of styles and genres has limited power to counter. Art's difficulty in representing the violent death of entire generations or populations has been particularly acute. Choosing works that have become representative of their historically violent moment, Norris explores not only their aesthetic strategies and perspectives but also the nature of the power they wield and the ethical engagements they enable or impede. She begins by mapping the altered ethical terrain of modern technological warfare, with its increasing targeting of civilian populations for destruction. She then proceeds historically with chapters on the trench poetry and modernist poetry of World War I, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, both the book and the film of Schindler's List, the conflicting historical stories of the Manhattan Project, a comparison of American and Japanese accounts of Hiroshima, Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, and the effects of press censorship in the Persian Gulf War. By looking at the whole span of the century's writing on war, Norris provides a fascinating critique of art's ethical power and limitations, along with its participation in--as well as protest against--the suffering that human beings have brought upon themselves.

Download or read book Critical Connections written by Lee Riedinger and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bombing of Pearl Harbor set off a chain of events that included the race to beat German scientists to build the atomic bomb. A tiny hamlet tucked away in the southern Appalachians proved an unlikely linchpin to win the race. The Manhattan Project required the combination of four secret sites—Clinton Laboratories, Y-12, K-25, and S-50—75,000 workers, and the nation’s finest scientists to create the Secret City, Oak Ridge. From the beginning, the effort was aided by the nearby University of Tennessee, which provided expertise to make the weapon possible. Following World War II, it was not clear what role this huge research and development program would play, but pioneering scientists and administrators were determined that one option—dismantling the whole thing—would not happen. Critical Connections chronicles how Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Y-12 National Security Complex, and their partners became outstanding examples of the military-industrial-educational complex from the Cold War to the present day. At the beginning of the 1950s, Oak Ridge became a flourishing, less-secret city, and the authors show how, decade by decade, ORNL became the source of major breakthroughs in physics, biology, computing, and other fields—and how these achievements required ever-closer connections with UT. By the mid-1990s, after many successful joint initiatives between UT and ORNL, UT was poised to compete to become the manager of ORNL. In 2000, UT-Battelle LLC won the bid from the Department of Energy: UT was charged with providing scientific direction and key personnel; its partner Battelle would oversee ORNL’s operations and chart its technology direction. The authors highlight the scientific developments these connections have brought, from nanotechnology to nuclear fission, from cryogenic experiments on mice to the world’s fastest supercomputer. The partnerships between a university, a city, and federal facilities helped solve some of the greatest challenges of the twentieth century—and point toward how to deal with those of the twenty-first.

Download or read book The Doomsday Machine written by Daniel Ellsberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for The California Book Award in Nonfiction The San Francisco Chronicle's Best of the Year List Foreign Affairs Best Books of the Year In These Times “Best Books of the Year" Huffington Post's Ten Excellent December Books List LitHub's “Five Books Making News This Week” From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, an eyewitness exposé of the dangers of America's Top Secret, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that continues to this day. Here, for the first time, former high-level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking firsthand account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization--and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration--threatens our very survival. No other insider with high-level access has written so candidly of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era. Framed as a memoir--a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating--this gripping exposé reads like a thriller and offers feasible steps we can take to dismantle the existing "doomsday machine" and avoid nuclear catastrophe, returning Ellsberg to his role as whistle-blower. The Doomsday Machine is thus a real-life Dr. Strangelove story and an ultimately hopeful--and powerfully important--book about not just our country, but the future of the world.

Download or read book Critical Assembly written by Lillian Hoddeson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-02-12 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1993 book explores how the 'critical assembly' of scientists at Los Alamos created the first atomic bombs.

Download or read book March to Armageddon written by Ronald E. Powaski and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1987 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been scientific studies of the nuclear arms race, and there have been political exposés -- yet no book until now has given the general reader a complete and accessible history of the events, forces and factors that have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. In this revealing account, Ronald Powaski examines two basic questions: What keeps the nuclear arms race going and why is it so difficult to end? Starting with the opening days of World War II, when Roosevelt gave the go-ahead for the secret development of the atom bomb, the famous Manhattan Project, Powaski traces the unfolding arms race up to the current day. He takes us through Truman's decision to use the bomb against Japan in 1945, the Cold War era and the missile crisis of Kennedy's administration, to the detente years of the seventies and the defense and arms control policies of Ronald Reagan, including "Star Wars" and START (the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). As Powaski explains, both the United States and the Soviet Union now have a combined total of almost 50,000 nuclear weapons. Nuclear arms treaties and agreements are threatening to collapse, he argues, while the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons throughout the world has given many countries the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Emphasizing the role of the United States, Powaski shows how one president after another has promised to do his utmost to end the nuclear weapons competition, yet each one has actually increased the quantity or quality of these weapons in the American arsenal. March to Armageddon reveals this startling discrepancy between presidential words and actions.--Publisher description.

Download or read book The General and the Genius written by James Kunetka and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-13 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a blinding flash in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1945, the world was changed forever. The bomb that ushered in the atomic age was the product of one of history's most improbable partnerships. The General and the Genius reveals how two extraordinary men pulled off the greatest scientific feat of the twentieth century. Leslie Richard Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers, who had made his name by building the Pentagon in record time and under budget, was made overlord of the impossibly vast scientific enterprise known as the Manhattan Project. His mission: to beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. So he turned to the nation's preeminent theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer—the chain-smoking, martini-quaffing son of wealthy Jewish immigrants, whose background was riddled with communist associations—Groves's opposite in nearly every respect. In their three-year collaboration, the iron-willed general and the visionary scientist led a brilliant team in a secret mountaintop lab and built the fearsome weapons that ended the war but introduced the human race to unimaginable new terrors. And at the heart of this most momentous work of World War II is the story of two extraordinary men—the general and the genius.