The Ultimate Weapon: The Race to Develop the Atomic Bomb (review)

Sullivan ably blends science, political history, and social history in this overview of U.S. efforts to create a weapon to stop Hitler in his tracks, an effort that was ultimately redirected to bring World War II to a definitive end in the Asian theater of war. Sullivan covers U.S. enlistment of the world's leading physicists, the uneasy relationship between Manhattan Project science director Oppenheimer and military director Groves, the construction of three massive, secret cities where the uranium and plutonium bombs were invented and assembled, the world-changing test at Alamogordo, and the devastating deployments at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although many readers will pick up this title with some prior knowledge of the Los Alamos site of operations, many will find that the information about life in makeshift industrial cities of Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee breaks new ground. Sullivan concludes with a substantive discussion of reaction among the scientific community to the unleashing of destructive nuclear power, and debate within the political community as to whether bombing an essentially defeated nation was morally justifiable. A wealth of black-and-white photographs are included, as are a bibliography, list for further reading, glossary of terms, source notes, and an index. This should quickly become the go-to book for middle-schoolers researching this facet of World War II.