Pandora's Keepers Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb Tapa dura - 2003

Información de la editorial

There were nine of them: men with names like Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi, Bohr, Lawrence, Bethe, Rabi, Szilard, Compton--brilliant men who believed in science and who saw before anyone else 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 secret laboratory hidden away in Los Alamos, New Mexico, they would crack the secret of the nuclear chain reaction and construct the most fearsome weapon mankind had ever known. Together they built a device that could incinerate a city and melt human beings so thoroughly that the only thing left would be 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 antinuclear weapons activists; others would go on to build bigger and even deadlier bombs. In explaining their lives and their struggles, Brian VanDeMark superbly illuminates not only their moral reckoning with their horrific creation, but also the ways in which each of us grapples with responsibility and unintended consequences. The result is not only spectacular history, but a subtle moral investigation of the highest order.
- The first major account of the Manhattan Project that focuses on the moral dimensions, the emotional dramas, and the interpersonal relationships, both before 1945 and after--and not just the science.- An all-star cast: Evenreaders who don't know much about science will recognize the names in this book: Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and others.
- New material: VanDeMark has mined previously overlooked archives and conducted numerous interviews with surviving Manhattan Project scientists.- Publicity tie-in: Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 on August 6 and 9--relevant summer anniversaries that will guarantee additional media attention for the book.