The bomb: a life

"Before the Bomb, there were simply 'bombs', lower case. Bombs are as old as hatred itself, but it was the twentieth century, one hundred years of almost incredible scientific progress and terrible war, that saw the birth of the Bomb, the human race's most powerful and most destructive discovery. Since 8.14 a.m. on 6 August 1945, when a lone B-29 aircraft appeared in the skies over Hiroshima and destroyed a city, the Bomb has haunted our dreams and threatened our existence." "In this magisterial account, Gerard DeGroot gives us the life story of the Bomb, from its birth in the turn-of-the-century physics labs of Europe to a childhood in the New Mexico desert of the 1940s, from adolescence and early adulthood in Bikini, Australia and Kazakhstan to unsettling maturity in test sites and missile silos all over the globe. The Bomb killed hundreds of thousands outright, condemned many more to lingering deaths and made vast tracts of land unfit for life. For decades it has dominated the psyches of millions, becoming a touchstone of popular culture, celebrated or decried in mass political movements, films, songs and books. DeGroot has captured the Bomb's short but vastly significant life in all its scope, providing us with an astonishingly vivid portrait of the times and the people - from Oppenheimer to Sakharov, Truman to Gorbachev - whose legacy still governs our world."--Jacket.

Killing is easy -- Neutrons and nations -- Born in Manhattan -- It's a boy -- Decisions -- Genshi bakudan -- Nuclear giants and ethical infants -- On a Russian scale -- Embracing Armageddon -- To Little Boy, a big brother -- The new look -- Symbols, not weapons -- Testing times -- To the brink -- How we learned to stop worrying and love the bomb -- Mid-life crisis -- Fallout.