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timeandtide posted:I'm interested in non-fiction books about nuclear weapons in a few areas: 1) history, 2) the sociological/cultural effects on Japan post-war or the world at large, and 3) any sort of philosophical books about the topic. Also, any Internet sites, online articles, etc. are fine too if you have a good one to recommend. Before the Fall-out by Diana Preston is a history of science account on the developments that lead up to the discovery of the science and ultimate creation of the atom bomb. On my shelf but I haven't gotten to it yet. Publisher's Weekly posted:Nuclear weapons have been an immutable aspect of the world for the past 60 years. The story of how they came to be, and the race between the Allied and Axis nations to be the first to harness the destructive power of the atom, is wonderfully told by British historian Preston (A First Rate Tragedy; Lusitania; etc.). She weaves together history, physics, politics and military strategies to convey both the monumental scientific achievement the bomb represented and, at the same time, the ethical and humanitarian implications of creating such a wild power. The Manhatten Project edited by Michael Stoff is a collection of primary documents with short interludes connecting them together. I had Stoff as a history professor and it was assigned reading, but despite it being primary documents I found it thoroughly interesting. This is great if you want some of the raw historical perspective. It can be a pain to find, but that amazon link has some used copies for sale (most likely ex-student) for $0.01 and its worth the cost of shipping. I never sold back my copy (I rarely sell back books though  ).For another raw historical perspective you can also track down a copy of Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Fat Man and Little Boy by John Coster-Mullens. Its self published and for sale off of the guys amazon page, but its actually very thoroughly researched and put together. There was a really neat story about the whole journey to put it together last December in The New Yorker which is worth the read alone even if you don't feel driven to get a copy. The guy is essentially a mildly autistic trucker who drove around taking pictures of declassified documents, old parts of the bomb, interviewing old machinists etc. After reading about it I couldn't resist and ordered a copy and it took about a month to arrive. Parts of it are incredibly dry, but the first hand accounts from the pilots are really interesting, the painstaking recreation of the bomb specs is impressive, and the pictures are neat to look at. Even though Coster-Mullens is a truck driver by trade there are several professional historians singing his work's praises, so don't let the source fool you. I love this topic and all of the huge historical issues surrounding it. I took a history of science course for an upper division writing credit back in college and got sucked into researching a lot of the cultural forces that lead up to this for the final paper, including anti-semitism and academic antagonism between experimentalists and theoretical scientists in the century leading up to WWII. Its really interesting, especially considering Germany was the pre-eminent scientific power and their socio-cultural-historical issues directly lead to their downfall (as opposed to solely a military defeat) and the subsequent rise of Big Science in the United States. For something totally different but tangentially related you can also check out the play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. Its about Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr's meeting in Copenhagen. The historical facts are sometimes wrong and some literary license is taken, but it deals with a lot of interesting issues and the clear human elements involved with development of the science behind the atomic bomb, which goes back to what I was just saying about that paper I wrote. Many of these scientists were colleagues and in a few cases friends, and a lot of America's scientific strength was a direct result of their theoretical physicists and mathematicians defecting to our side (in a lot of cases because they were jewish, which directly influenced their career choices and in many ways being forced into theoretical physics and mathematics, which were considered "jewish" occupations, another direct result of past antagonisms over funding between experimentalists and theorists), Einstein being the famous example. ...phew, sorry about that rambling Yiggy fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jun 4, 2009 |
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Jun 4, 2009 04:51
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