The Manhattan project: the birth of the atomic bomb in the words of its creators, eyewitnesses, and historians

From the editor : Preserving the Manhattan Project / Cynthia C. Kelly

Introduction : A great work of human collaboration / Richard Rhodes

Section 1 : Explosive discoveries and bureaucratic inertia

Thinking no pedestrian thoughts / Richard Rhodes

The atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands / H.G. Wells

If only we had been clever enough / Leona Marshall Libby

What wasn't expected wasn't seen! / Edward Teller

I had come close but had missed a great discovery / Philip Abelson

Enlisting Einstein / William Lanouette

Albert Einstein to F.D. Roosevelt / Albert Einsten and Franklin D. Roosevelt

A practically irresistible super-bomb / Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls

Working for Otto Frisch / J. Wechsler

Likely to lead to decisive results / The Maud Report, March 1941

Wild notions about atomic bombs / G. Pascal Zachary

Transatlantic travails / Andrew Brown

Section 2 : An unprecedented alliance

The rather fuzzy state of our thinking / James Hershberg

The stuff will be more powerful than we thought / Vannevar Bush

You'll never get a chain reaction going here / Richard Rhodes

The Chicago Pile-1 : the first chain reaction / Enrico Fermi

Fermi was cool as a cucumber / Crawford Greenewalt

Proceeding in the dark / Leslie R.Groves

Swimming in syrup / Robert Jungk

The Los Alamos primer : how to make an atomic bomb / Robert Serber

These were very great men indeed / Richard Feynman

Misunderstandings and anxieties / Stephane Groueff

A weapon of devastating power will soon become available / Niels Bohr to Winston Churchill

One top secret agreement too many / Winston Churchill

Section 3 : An extraordinary pair

His potential outweighed any security risk / Leslie R. Groves

Scientific director for the special laboratory in New Mexico / James B. Conant and Leslie R. Groves to J. Robert Oppenheimer

When you looked at Captain Groves, a little alarm bell rang "caution" / Robert S. Norris

Decisive, confident and cool / Robert DeVore

A bureaucratic warrior of the first rank / Robert S. Norris

The biggest S.O.B. / Kenneth D. Nichols

Not right, do it again! / John Lansdale, Jr.

A "Jewish Pan" at Berkeley / Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin

The absent-minded professor / Berkeley Gazette, February 14, 1934

His head wreathed in a cloud of smoke / Edward Gerjuoy

A psychiatrist by vocation, and a physicist by avocation / Jeremy Bernstein

The most compelling man / Jennet Conant

Appeasing General Groves / Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin

Visions of immortality / Robert S. Norris

An audacious gamble / Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin

When Robert Oppenheimer walked onto the page / Joseph Kanon

Doctor Atomic : the myth and the man / John Adams

A cascade of different Oppenheimers / Jon Else

Section 4 : Secret cities

A new and uncertain adventure in the wilderness / Stephane Groueff

A crazy place to do any war thing / Stirling Colgate

Excitement, devotion, and patriotism prevailed / J. Robert Oppenheimer

The case of the vanishing physicists / Stanislaw Ulam

Learning on the job / Rebecca Diven

Life at P.O. Box 1663 / Ruth Marshak

A boy's adventures at Los Alamos / Dana Mitchell

Something extraordinary was happening here / Katrina Mason

A relief from the hubbub of the hill / Katrina Mason

An SED at Los Alamos / Benjamin Bederson

A bad time to get a new boss / Joseph Kanon

Tumbleweed and jackrabbits in the Evergreen State / Steve Buckingham

Making toilet paper / Roger Rohrbacher

Termination winds / Michele Gerber

Whoever gets there first will win the war / Leon Overstreet

The whole project was like a three-legged stool / Walter Simon

Cover stories / Franklin T. Matthias

K-25 Plant : forty-four acres and a mile long / William J. Wilcox

Tennessee girls on the job / Colleen Black

Ode to life behind the fence / Clifford and Colleen Black

Operating Oak Ridge's "calutrons" / Theodore Rockwell

Men, write home for Christmas / Norman Brown

An answer to their prayers / Valeria Steele

All-Black crews with white foremen / Robert Bauman

Manhattan Project sites in Manhattan / Robert S. Norris

Manhattan Project sites in Washington, D.C. / Robert S. Norris

Monsanto's playhouse for polonium / Stephane Groueff

Mysteries at the Met lab / Isabella Karle

Section 5 : Secrecy, intelligence and counterintelligence

Unprecedented security measures / Robert S. Norris

Security : a headache on the hill / Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin

Mrs. Farmer, I presume / Laura Fermi

As if they were walking in the woods / John Lansdale, Jr.

Electric rocket story fails to launch / Charlotte Serber

A spy in our midst / Laura Fermi

Never in our wildest dreams / Lilli Hornig

The youngest spies / Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel

Enormoz espionage / Gregg Herken

Jump start for the Soviets / David Holloway, Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel

Holes in the security fence / Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel

A calming role for the counterintelligence corps / Thomas O. Jones

The Alsos mission : scientists as sleuths / Robert S. Norris

From France to the Black Forest : seeking atomic scientists / Richard Rhodes

I have been expecting you / John Lansdale, Jr.

Section 6 : The Trinity Test

Leaving the bomb project / Joseph Rotblat

Anticipating the end of war / Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin

Scientists will be held responsible / Arthur Holly Compton

Advising against the bomb / The Franck Report, June 1945

No acceptable alternative / The Interim Committee Report, June 1945

Scientists petition the President / Leo Szilard and other scientists

Watching Trinity / Thomas Farrell and Leslie R. Groves

Babysitting the bomb / Donald Hornig

A handful of soldiers at Trinity / Val Fitch

Eyewitness accounts of the Trinity Test / Edwin McMillan, Kenneth Greisen, Enrico Fermi, Maurice Shapiro, Robert Serber

Violence without limit / Joseph Kanon

Section 7 : Dropping the bombs

Aiming for military and psychological effects / Target Committee

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz : born too soon / Frederick L. Ashworth

The 509th Composite Group at Tinian Island / Stephen Walker

Official bombing order, 25 July 1945 / Thos. T. Handy

A very sobering event : operational history of the 509th Bombardment

Massive pain, suffering and horror / Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Miss Yamaoka, you look like a monster / Richard B. Frank

For all we know, we have created a Frankenstein! / Paul Boyer

The battle of the laboratories / Harry S. Truman

The culmination of years of Herculean effort / Henry L. Stimson

Eyewitness over Nagasaki / William Laurence

It was over! / Frederick J. Olivi

The atomic bomb's peculiar "disease" / George Weller

Section 8 : Reflections on the bomb

Outwitting General Groves / Harold Agnew

Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists / J. Robert Oppenheimer

You have done excellent work / J. Robert Oppenheimer

A citizen's guide to the atomic bomb : The Smyth Report / Henry DeWolf Smyth

Hersey's Hiroshima / John Hersey

The decision to use the atomic bomb / Henry L. Stimson

History is often not what actually happened / Barton J. Bernstein

A question of motives / Patrick M.S. Blackett

Thank God for the atomic bomb / Paul Fussell

The return to nothingness / Felix Morley

The bomb in national memories / Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Hiroshima in History / J. Samuel Walker

Why does this decision continue to haunt us? / Gar Alperovitz

Section 9 : Living with the bomb

On the international control of atomic energy / Acheson-Lilienthal Report, March 1946

Open letter to the United Nations / Niels Bohr, June 1950

I hope not a soul will remember my name / Paul Mullins, "Louis Slotin Sonata"

Atoms for peace / Dwight D. Eisenhower, December 1953

A cold war warning / The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, July 1955

A world free of nuclear weapons / George P. Schultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn

The nuclear threat / Mikhail Gorbachev

Thoughts on a 21st-century Manhattan Project / George A. Cowan

Chronology

Biographies

Bibliography

Index

Text credits.