John Karabaic’s Reviews > The Making of the Atomic Bomb > Status Update

Getting an excellent perspective on the decision to use the bomb on Japan.

Firebombing of Hamburg. I need a drink.

Richard Rhodes makes a masterful simile about the relationship between chemists & physicists in the quest for nuclear fire, when the chemists find evidence for fissioning uranium.

"It was as though a maker of hand axes had discovered fire by striking flints while the sorcerers pondered how to harness lightning. He might hardly believe his luck and urgently seek their authentication even though he knew what burned his hand was real."

Just past Hitler's rise to power. Given current events, nauseated. Rhodes knows how to keep you reading by dramatically giving the right details at the right time on all the context of the story. Did you know Fritz Haber gave the same excuse for using poison gas as we did for using the a-bomb? "Saving lives by shortening the war."

"To the end of his life, [Leo Szilard] made dull men uncomfortable and vain men mad." <3 so far.