Download or read book Adventures in the Atomic Age written by Glenn Theodore Seaborg and published by Farrar Straus & Giroux. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned physicist describes his Nobel Prize-winning career, his work with the Manhattan Project, his discovery of the element that makes atomic bombs explode, and his term as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Download or read book Atomic Ghost written by John Bradley and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology on the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb on Japan. In When We Say Hiroshima, Sadako writes: "When we say Hiroshima, / do people answer, gently, / Ah, Hiroshima? / Say Hiroshima, and hear Pearl Harbor. / Say Hiroshima, and hear Rape of Nanjing. / Say Hiroshima, and hear of women and children / thrown into trenches, doused with gasoline, / and burned alive in Manila ... Say Hiroshima, / and we don't hear, gently, / Ah, Hiroshima."
Download or read book By the Bomb s Early Light American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age written by Merle Curti Professor Emeritus of History Paul Boyer and published by ACLS History E-Book Project. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study on the effect of the nuclear bomb and the threat of nuclear war on the collective American consciousness.
Download or read book The Making of the Atomic Age written by Alwyn McKay and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1984 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The First Atomic Age written by Matthew Lavine and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-06-05 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the close of the 19th century, strange new forms of energy arrested the American public's attention in ways that no scientific discovery ever had before. This groundbreaking cultural history tells the story of the first nuclear culture, one whose lasting effects would be seen in the familiar "atomic age" of the post-war twentieth century.
Download or read book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam written by Gar Alperovitz and published by New York : Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1965 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assessment of the influence of the atomic factor on U.S.-Russian relations since the Hiroshima bombing under the Truman administration.
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 The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution written by Keir A. Lieber and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. The core notion is that countries protected by these fearsome weapons can stop competing so intensely with their adversaries: they can end their arms races, scale back their alliances, and stop jockeying for strategic territory. But rarely have theory and practice been so opposed. Why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: the persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons. They explain why the Cold War superpowers raced so feverishly against each other; why the creation of "mutual assured destruction" does not ensure peace; and why the rapid technological changes of the 21st century will weaken deterrence in critical hotspots around the world. By explaining how the nuclear revolution falls short, Lieber and Press discover answers to the most pressing questions about deterrence in the coming decades: how much capability is required for a reliable nuclear deterrent, how conventional conflicts may become nuclear wars, and how great care is required now to prevent new technology from ushering in an age of nuclear instability.
Download or read book Weapons of Mass Destruction written by Martin Miller and published by Schiffer Military History. This book was released on 2017 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Nuclear Age properly began with the discovery of the nucleus by Ernest Rutherford in 1911, but its impact on civilization began with the use of atomic bombs against Japan in WWII. The development of atomic bombs forever changed the world. From having a single bomb immediately after the Nagasaki attack, the United States would go on to build some 70,000 nuclear bombs over the course of the Cold War. The colossal brinkmanship with the Soviet Union threatened each country's people. Why were so many bombs thought to be necessary? How did the infrastructure come about to enable the delicate business of building and deploying so many bombs? This book answers these questions and more; through high quality photographs the full flowering of the warheads and delivery systems of the nuclear age are shown in chilling detail."--Book jacket.
Download or read book The Day the Sun Rose Twice written by Ferenc Morton Szasz and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 1995-04-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Western History Association’s Robert G. Athearn Award for outstanding book on the twentieth-century American West Just before dawn on July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated at Trinity Site in an isolated stretch of the central New Mexico desert. It may have been the single most important event of the twentieth century. The Day the Sun Rose Twice tells the fascinating story of the events leading up to this first test explosion, the characters and roles of the people involved, and the aftermath of the bomb’s successful demonstration. With J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” at last getting his Hollywood close-up in Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster film Oppenheimer, readers can discover the background behind the world’s first atomic blast in Ferenc Morton Szasz’s award-winning history. “Tightly focused, lucidly written, and thoroughly researched,” according to the New York Times Book Review, the book provides “a valuable introduction to how our nuclear dilemma began.”
Download or read book The Age of Radiance written by Craig Nelson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Radiation is a complex and paradoxical concept: staggering amounts of energy flow from seemingly inert rock and that energy is both useful and dangerous. While nuclear energy affects our everyday lives--from nuclear medicine and food irradiation to microwave technology--its invisible rays trigger biological damage, birth defects, and cellular mayhem. From the end of the nineteenth century through the use of the atomic bomb in World War II to the twenty-first century's confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power, Craig Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Enrico Fermi, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, FDR, Robert Oppenheimer, and Ronald Reagan, among others. He reveals many little-known details, including how Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler transformed America from a country that created light bulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel's lifelong dream of global peace; how emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain a run-amok nuclear reactor, while wondering if they would live or die. Brilliantly fascinating and remarkably accessible, The Age of Radiance traces mankind's complicated and difficult relationship with the dangerous power it discovered and made part of civilization"--
Download or read book The Apocalypse Factory Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age written by Steve Olson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others—the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility—manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris.
Download or read book Atomic Doctors written by James L. Nolan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unflinching examination of the moral and professional dilemmas faced by physicians who took part in the Manhattan Project. After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained a treasure trove of information about his grandfather’s role as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure. A talented ob-gyn radiologist, he cared for the scientists on the project, organized safety and evacuation plans for the Trinity test at Alamogordo, escorted the “Little Boy” bomb from Los Alamos to the Pacific Islands, and was one of the first Americans to enter the irradiated ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Participation on the project challenged Dr. Nolan’s instincts as a healer. He and his medical colleagues were often conflicted, torn between their duty and desire to win the war and their oaths to protect life. Atomic Doctors follows these physicians as they sought to maximize the health and safety of those exposed to nuclear radiation, all the while serving leaders determined to minimize delays and maintain secrecy. Called upon both to guard against the harmful effects of radiation and to downplay its hazards, doctors struggled with the ethics of ending the deadliest of all wars using the most lethal of all weapons. Their work became a very human drama of ideals, co-optation, and complicity. A vital and vivid account of a largely unknown chapter in atomic history, Atomic Doctors is a profound meditation on the moral dilemmas that ordinary people face in extraordinary times.
Download or read book The Last Man Who Knew Everything written by David N. Schwartz and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of the brilliant, charismatic, and very human physicist and innovator Enrico Fermi In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything -- at least about physics. But he was also a complex figure who was a part of both the Italian Fascist Party and the Manhattan Project, and a less-than-ideal father and husband who nevertheless remained one of history's greatest mentors. Based on new archival material and exclusive interviews, The Last Man Who Knew Everything lays bare the enigmatic life of a colossus of twentieth century physics.
Download or read book Nuclear Statecraft written by Francis J. Gavin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are at a critical juncture in world politics. Nuclear strategy and policy have risen to the top of the global policy agenda, and issues ranging from a nuclear Iran to the global zero movement are generating sharp debate. The historical origins of our contemporary nuclear world are deeply consequential for contemporary policy, but it is crucial that decisions are made on the basis of fact rather than myth and misapprehension. In Nuclear Statecraft, Francis J. Gavin challenges key elements of the widely accepted narrative about the history of the atomic age and the consequences of the nuclear revolution. On the basis of recently declassified documents, Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. In case after case, he finds that we know far less than we think we do about our nuclear history. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers. Gavin's rigorous historical work not only tells us what happened in the past but also offers a powerful tool to explain how nuclear weapons influence international relations. Nuclear Statecraft provides a solid foundation for future policymaking.
Download or read book Trinity A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb written by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trinity, the debut graphic book by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, depicts the dramatic history of the race to build and the decision to drop the first atomic bomb in World War Two—with a focus on the brilliant, enigmatic scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. "Succeeds as both a graphic primer and a philosophical meditation." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This sweeping historical narrative traces the spark of invention from the laboratories of nineteenth-century Europe to the massive industrial and scientific efforts of the Manhattan Project, and even transports the reader into a nuclear reaction—into the splitting atoms themselves. The power of the atom was harnessed in a top-secret government compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, by a group of brilliant scientists led by the enigmatic wunderkind J. Robert Oppenheimer. Focused from the start on the monumentally difficult task of building an atomic weapon, these men and women soon began to wrestle with the moral implications of actually succeeding. When they detonated the first bomb at a test site code-named Trinity, they recognized that they had irreversibly thrust the world into a new and terrifying age. With powerful renderings of WWII's catastrophic events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fetter-Vorm unflinchingly chronicles the far-reaching political, environmental, and psychological effects of this new invention. Informative and thought-provoking, Trinity is the ideal introduction to one of the most significant events in history.
Download or read book Heisenberg in the Atomic Age written by Cathryn Carson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-11 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of the Second World War opened a new era for science in public life. Heisenberg in the Atomic Age explores the transformations of science's public presence in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. It shows how Heisenberg's philosophical commentaries, circulating in the mass media, secured his role as science's public philosopher, and it reflects on his policy engagements and public political stands, which helped redefine the relationship between science and the state. With deep archival grounding, the book tracks Heisenberg's interactions with intellectuals from Heidegger to Habermas and political leaders from Adenauer to Brandt. It also traces his evolving statements about his wartime research on nuclear fission for the National Socialist regime. Working between the history of science and German history, the book's central theme is the place of scientific rationality in public life - after the atomic bomb, in the wake of the Third Reich.
