DeGroot takes us on a history of the bomb from the beginning of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 21st. He begins with the 1904 observation by the prescient physicist Frederick Soddy that tapping the energy contained in the atom could lead to a weapon with which man "could destroy the earth if he chose." Inspired by Soddy, H.G. Wells wrote a novel in 1914 describing a 1956 world war with great cities destroyed by atomic bombs. Ernest Rutherford's 1919 splitting of the atom led inexorably to the near realization of Wells' vision.

DeGroot notes some interesting byproducts of the bomb: for one, bombing made a significant difference in how war was defined: no longer would battlefields be bounded. Additionally, the cost-intensive nature of nuclear physics meant that funding had to come from the state rather than academia, forever changing the nature of research. And of course, there is that most obvious byproduct of the atomic bomb: fallout. DeGroot unveils a great deal of evidence documenting both the short-term and long-terms effects.


As his history moves through the Cold War, Korean War, Cuban Crisis, and current times, he recounts the currents of opinion and policies of "a world sick on the aftereffects of discovery" (Richard Powers, The Gold Bug Variations). Villains are identified, including the paranoid unrealistic megalomanics Edward Teller, Herman Kahn, and Curtis LeMay. Truman comes off sounding very bad, Krushchev suprisingly good.

DeGroot ends his very readable tour of the bomb's history with a sobering conclusion: "The Bomb is a weapon which reflects the flawed nature of human beings - their distrust of each other, their craving for power and their obsession with things big. It was developed by scientists whose quest for discovery caused them to ignore the implications of their work. It was seized upon by politicians and soldiers who confused power with security and lacked the imagination to understand that the atom bomb was something new. ... [The bomb] acts like a mirror, reflecting our own inadequacies."

(JAF)

This book makes an interesting contrast to Dark Sun. It is substantially less technical, which is a shame, but it covers much more of the material I was hoping for.
It tells us something of the Russian nuclear weapons story along with a little (though not as much as I hoped for) of the British and French stories, along with a paragraph or so on China. We also get a more rounded story covering something of events in the 50s and a brief discussion of post cuban-missile-crisis events.

The author writes in a compelling fashion, and I really have only two complaints.

The first is that he is a little too eager to pepper the pages with "lunacy, madness, insanity, craziness" and so on, and when he is finished using these words, he'll throw in some quotations that use them. I found this childish and banal; the facts being portrayed speak for themselves, and this decorative flourish reduces their impact rather than increasing it.

Secondly he really doesn't seem to get deterrence, or even logical thinking.
After pointing out frequently how ridiculous the US and USSR stances on the numbers of nuclear weapons each needed were, he then seems to be saying, as best I can understand, that the French and British deterrents were essentially useless because they didn't possess enough weapons. He seems to totally miss the point that the real issue, not just with nuclear weapons but with any deterrent, is not some sort of "can we 'win' the war" tally of weapons systems, but "can I make the cost to my opponent of achieving X so high that he doesn't bother to attempt it". Mutually Assured Destruction is one form of deterrence, but hardly the only one.
It is interesting, in this regard, that the thinking, muddled as its prime-time-TV manifestations may be, surrounding current-day proliferation appears far more in touch with reality. Presumably one day the penny will drop, even in public discourse, that the US can no longer force its way on other countries (Iran? NK? Pakistan?) as it has done with Iraq, precisely because the cost of doing so will be the lost of an American city or two. This will, presumably, lead to honest negotiation as in, for example, US dealings with the EU or China or Japan, and that is probably better for the countries involved, the world, and even the US.

One aspect of the book I should mention as being especially interesting to me, in light of modern times, is just how dishonest, corrupt and evil the US government was throughout the Cold War period. Lying to citizens, bizarre medical experiments, profits over people, it's all here.
An optimist might say, well eventually this came to light but to me, a pessimist, the message is that people get away with this stuff, that the existing politicians will likewise get away with their evil, and that it was luck rather than wisdom that saved the day during the cold war, a luck that is likely to run out one day. ( )

This is a well written book BUT there is absolutely nothing new in it. If you are only to read one book about the bomb this is one is a reasonable choice because it does handle the Russian bomb project and details of disarmament after the fall of the cold war. If you have already read many, it is not really worth it. ( )