Michael A. Hiltzik

I was leery of this one at first since I thought it might be "of local interest" and I am not a Coloradoan. However, I really appreciate the multi-year engineering achievement over multiple presidential terms with cameos by an offensively named god, the IWW ("Wobblies"), father and son lethal accidents bookending carnage, and more.

I was a bit of an accelerator groupie in my high school years, the early 1970s. I got to hang out a bit at both Argonne National Lab and Fermilab. I went on to get a Master's degree... ABD.. but that was theoretical condensed matter physics, so I drifted pretty far from the bubble chambers!

I really enjoyed this book. It's a pretty easy read. Hiltzik doesn't really wander off track: what did E. O. Lawrence do? There's a bit of physics in the book, but very little. No formulas at all. For show more example, we hear a little about how K-capture cross section varies with atomic number but we don't pick up any insight as to why. This is not a physics book! It might well whet a person's appetite to learn some physics though.

This is really a book about people.

I actually got to hang out with a few of the people in this book back when I was in college. I attended a bunch of physics seminars where hot shot young physicists would present the latest hot thing. Eugene Wigner was ancient by then but he'd sit up front and ask these hilarious questions... "Excuse me, this is all way beyond me, but back there on line 2, didn't you forget a minus sign?" The hot shot would run weeping from the room. Of course I exaggerate. But Hiltzik gives a story here about a much younger Wigner that really captures that same spirit. So I can say from personal experience... the stories in this book about people... they're really worthwhile! show less

This is a very interesting history, informative and well written. In telling the story of the desire for, the fight and planning for and the construction of this engineering marvel, Hitzik is telling many interlocking stories. Most prominent is the recounting of the history of water rights in the American southwest, and the fighting between the states of that region for use of the waters of the Colorado River. Hitzik tells of the early attempts to control the river and make use of the river show more through irrigation and engineering, including canals and aqueducts. He describes how the ability to use the river for irrigation has transformed that formerly desert region and allowed Las Vegas and, especially, Los Angeles to explode into mega-cities. The politics of the fight to create the dam as a public rather than a private enterprise is very interesting and has resonance in today's political battles, as well. The detailing of the engineering itself, and the ways in which new procedures and technologies had to be designed to build this mammoth dam, is quite riveting. The ways in which the contractors made sure to squeeze every possible nickel of profit out of the project, sometimes fraudulently and very, very frequently at the expense of the safety and the lives of the thousands of construction workers involved in the project make depressing but hardly surprising reading. At least two full chapters are devoted to describing the ways in which the very real danger to the workers, danger that came in all sorts, was purposefully ignored by the construction company in order that they might rush the job and therefore maximize their profits. workers' attempts to organize in order to improve their lots (in addition to the danger, pay rates could be lowered at any time and often were) were crushed ruthlessly. And after all, this was all going on in the middle of the Great Depression. Where were these men and their families going to go? The whole thing gives us America in a nutshell, particularly at that point in history: the whole range from dynamic designers, builders and innovators to insatiable greed mongers and ruthless exploiters. show less

Fascinating biography of the man who figured out how to raise money for "Big Science" (large, expensive, multi-disciplinary programs) from philanthropists, industry, AND the government. Essential he created the modern (industrial) research lab by the sheer force of his own personality. Many today would not be able to tell you what a Cyclotron was, but they do know the nuclear weapons they birthed. Lawrence thought he could stay above the fray of politics, but eventually that naivety would show more get the better of him and cost him his very life. Recommended for any researcher considering taking money from the US Government. Be careful what you ask for. show less