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 On September 18, 2007, the Atomic Heritage Foundation and Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers released The Manahattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians. Compiled and edited over the past year by Cindy Kelly and the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the anthology provides unique historical insight into the Manhattan Project and and its legacy. The book is avaialble in our online store and at retailers nationwide.
The Manhattan Project: Insights on the Birth of the Atomic Age The first book signing event for The Manhattan Project at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans on Saturday, September 15, 2007, did not have a promising start. The first person who picked up the book looked at it skeptically and said, “There is probably nothing that I don’t know in this book,” and quickly flipped through the 495-page anthology. What he did not know was he was talking to the editor, Cynthia C. Kelly, and was soon set straight. There’s never been a book quite like The Manhattan Project, a unique combination of historical documents and first-hand accounts from the bomb’s creators, contemporary observers, political leaders and historians. Even the most well-read history buff will be surprised by some of the rarely published documents and reflections. Five of the world’s experts on the Manhattan Project, including Pulitzer-prize winners Richard Rhodes and Kai Bird, worked on it in an advisory capacity, to make sure that the book has the “right stuff.” Along with dozens of well-known historical documents such as Albert Einstein’s letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt of August 1938 warning that Germany was developing an atomic weapon, it includes some rare gems. Just one example: Winston Churchill’s memo to President Roosevelt on “Tube Alloys” after their Hyde Park meeting on the atomic bomb on September 18, 1944, complete with his handwritten changes. Unlike many other accounts of the Manhattan Project, the book recognizes the effort as an Anglo-American effort. Bureaucratic inertia plagued the Americans at the outset, giving the Germans a two-year head start. Meanwhile, while their laboratories and homes were being pummeled by the German blitzkreig, the British scientists produced a virtual blueprint for producing an atomic bomb. Two British documents included in the book, the Maud Report and the Frisch-Peierls Report, were important in jump-starting the Manhattan Project in the United States. Another unique aspect of the book is the inclusion of numerous personal accounts, many never before published. These intimate documents give the Manhattan Project a human dimension that is often overlooked. Over the past five years, the Atomic Heritage Foundation has collected oral histories from more than one hundred Manhattan Project veterans. Some excerpts describe life in the construction camp at Oak Ridge, TN, euphemistically named “Happy Valley,” where 15,000 people lived in barracks, trailers, and rows of shack-like homes with communal bath houses. Other excerpts recount growing up at Los Alamos, including the exploits of 12-year-old boys who scavenged a powerful laboratory searchlight and one night saved a lost pilot circling over Los Alamos by signaling him in Morse code, “Not Santa Fe! Not Santa Fe! Go southeast!” Unlike some of Hollywood’s portrayals of the Manhattan Project scientists as Dr. Strangelove-esque characters, the book gives a fuller, more accurate perspective. The petition of scientists to President Truman imploring him not to drop the bomb on Japan attests to most scientists’ heartfelt dilemma. Most of the 125,000 participants did not even know what they were producing until the newspapers announced “IT’S ATOMIC,” the day that the first bomb was dropped on Japan. Other entries explore why the story of the Manhattan Project is so compelling to people today, having become an almost mythical tale of brilliant scientists and intellectuals dealing with forces of good and evil. These include reflections by John Adams, composer of the recent opera “Doctor Atomic”; Joseph Kanon, author of Los Alamos; and Jon Else, producer of the award-winning film, “The Day after Trinity.” Finally, the book highlights the struggle over the last sixty years to establish international control of nuclear weapons and reduce or eliminate the threat of nuclear war. A letter to the Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2007, from the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, calls for urgent action to abolish nuclear weapons. The closing piece contains the thoughts of one Manhattan Project leader who calls for a twentieth-century Manhattan Project to address today’s nuclear threats. The skeptic at the book-signing was convinced and bought a copy. If you are interested, the book is published by Black Dog and Leventhal, New York, and available for $24.95 at bookstores nationwide. Cynthia C. Kelly, editor, is also president and founder of the Atomic Heritage Foundation. |
