In rich, human, political, and scientific detail, here is the complete story of the nuclear bomb. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly—or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began merely as an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers—Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann—stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight. Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step-by-step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man’s most awesome discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is at once a narrative tour de force and a document as powerful as its subject.