If the first 270 pages of this book had been published separately, they would
have made up a lively, insightful, beautifully written history of theoretical
physics and the men and women who plumbed the mysteries of the atom.
Along with the following 600 pages, they become a sweeping epic, filled with
terror and pity, of the ultimate scientific quest: the development of the
ultimate weapon. Rhodes is a peerless explainer of difficult concepts; he is
even better at chronicling the personalities who made the discoveries that
led to the Bomb. Niels Bohr dominates the first half of the book as J. Robert
Oppenheimer does the second; both men were gifted philosophers of science as
well as brilliant physicists. The central irony of this book, which won
a National Book Critics Circle Award, is that the greatest minds of the
century contributed to the greatest destructive force in history.

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