Picturing the Bomb: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project

ANNOTATION

Published to coincide with the Manhattan Project's 50th anniversary, Picturing the Bomb presents compelling images--most never seen by the public before--that offer a fresh look at the U.S. government's effort to build the world's first atomic device. Introduction by Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. 283 photos, 19 in color.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This book presents the first photographic record of the Manhattan Project - the United States Government-sponsored effort to build an atomic device - and its publication coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the development of the atomic bomb. The compelling photographs from the Manhattan Project, by turns specific, abstract, dramatic, and surreal, offer a multifaceted look at history. Photographs of landscapes and of construction, of scientific experiments and their results, are framed against official portraits and casual snapshots. In gathering these materials the authors, Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra, have had unprecedented access to the personal archives of many physicists and their families, as Rachel is the granddaughter of Enrico Fermi, one of the key participants in the Manhattan Project. An introduction by Richard Rhodes, author of the pulitzer prize-winning book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, provides a historical framework for the Manhattan Project. Then, in a series of striking images, the body of the book compares and contrasts the different individuals, activities, and settings that characterized the Manhattan Project.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This visually compelling collection of private and official photos found in family albums and laboratory archives offers a closer look at the Manhattan Project scientists who built the first atomic bombs, the military men who delivered them to the target and various sites connected with that effort (principally Los Alamos, N.M.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Hanford, Wash.). Included are informal shots of physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr and other key figures in the historic project; photos of technical facilities; pictures of the components of the atomic devices; and a stunning graphic record of the first explosion at the Trinity test site. The collection is chillingly rounded off with a series of photos by one of the Los Alamos physicists, Robert Serber, who studied the blast damage of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rhodes's introduction, the extended captions and the main text (one of the authors is Enrico Fermi's granddaughter) provide a thorough review of the project from start to finish. Photos. Library of Science Book Club alternate. (Oct.)

Library Journal

During World War II, three cities were built in months to facilitate work on the atomic bomb: Hanford, Washington; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Los Alamos, New Mexico. Security was so tight that most Manhattan Project employees had no idea what was being built. Those in the know were instructed to use the work gadget instead of weapon. This collection of photographs, compiled by the granddaughter of Enrico Fermi and photographer Samra, is an eerie combination of recently declassified government archives and snapshots taken by residents of the new cities, which resonate on both epic and human levels. An aerial photo of the burgeoning development at Hanford-acres of new buildings set against the narrow river and Hanford Bluffs-attests to the vast scale of the Manhattan Project. A shot of a Santa being searched by military police at an Oak Ridge checkpoint illustrates out the absurdity of importing civilian life into an armed camp. The testing of the bomb is chronicled in a particularly grim chapter and its use in another. No serious American history collection can afford to be without this startling, eye-opening document.-Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"

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