Anyone interested in the science and politics of the atom bomb:
"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" - Richard Rhodes 886 pages. 13-788 pages for the actual book part.
"Twenty-five years after its initial publication, The Making of the Atomic Bomb remains the definitive history of nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project. From the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan, Richard Rhodes’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book details the science, the people, and the socio-political realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb.
This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence.
From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story.
Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work."
--
Reader Comment: "Rhodes does not ignore any aspect of the process. This book is a scientific history, a political history, a biography, and a technical manual. He begins in the 19th century at the advent of nuclear physics, and walks through the lives of its significant contributors. He goes into (often excrutiating) details about the development of the first nuclear reactors, the early life of Oppenheimer, and the development of the amazing military-industrial complex required to create the small amount of material needed for the three atom bombs detonated during World War II (one test unit and the two used over Japan). Rhodes makes the people involved seem human and manages to mostly avoid social commentary, merely presenting the facts as they were."
--
"Dark Sun" is the companion book that carries on into the hydrogen bomb, but it isn't nearly as engrossing (for me). More backstabbing in that one.
"The making of" covers essentially all of the scientific discoveries necessary before the fission bomb could be envisioned, the work at Los Alamos, the work at Oak Ridge and Hanford, lots of detail, yet, an easy read.