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Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
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Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb description
An engrossing history of the scientific discoveries, political maneuverings, and cold-war espionage leading to the creation of mankind's most destructive weapon. Includes 94 archival photographs and a glossary with brief descriptions of the hundreds of people interviewed and discussed in the book. Author Richard Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his previous atomic tome, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. |
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Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb Customer Reviews
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A Dark Sun and a Cold War...
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Richard Rhodes' 1995 "Dark Sun" is the well-written and provocative sequel to his Pulizter Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." "Dark Sun", with some overlap, picks up the story with intertwined narratives about the making of the thermonuclear bomb, the espionage that allowed the Soviets to keep pace, and the Cold War atmosphere in which it all took place. One need not agree with all of Rhodes' conclusions to appreciate the depth of his research and the span of his narrative.
Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the Second World War, the American scientific and policy communities were split over the necessity for the follow-on development of a hydrogen bomb. Many of the original Manhatten Project scientists were shocked by the results of the atomic bomb and could scarcely conceive that a more destructive weapon might be useful. The result would be painful infighting, not least between Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, the leading scientific advocates against and for the hydrogen bomb.
For U.S. policy-makers, the fragile wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was already in tatters. Russia's brutal imposition of communist rule in Eastern Europe, its paranoid security policies, and its own rapid bomb development program put the Truman Administration in the political bind of having to compete with the Soviet Union whether it wanted to or not.
Rhodes does an excellent job tracing the Soviet nuclear weapons program through the efforts of its leading scientists, every bit the equal of their western counterparts and materially aided by their secret knowledge of the work that had already been accomplished in the Manhatten Project. Soviet espionage inside the U.S. and British nuclear programs saved years of work, enabling the Russians to field an atomic bomb by 1949 and a hydrogen bomb by 1955, much faster than predicted.
Rhodes' view of the subsequent arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the state of nuclear deterrence that was its outcome, is dark and pessimistic. In his undoubted horror at what might have happened, he rather fails to give credit to policy-makers for what did not happen, a nuclear exchange. Rhodes' claim that a more peaceful alternative history to the Cold War was prevented by aggressive US post-war policy is not confirmed by much of Cold War scholarship since 1995. Nevertheless, "Dark Sun" is highly recommended to students of the Cold War, not least for its clear lay-person explanation of the possibilities of the hydrogen bomb. |
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