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research is treated best in Thomas Powers, Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1:993); despite serious reservations about the author, David Irving, The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967); David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (New York: W H. Freeman, 1992); Mark Walker, Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb (New York: Plenum Press, 1995); Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); the memoir by Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Macmillan, 1970); and Jeremy Bernstein, Hitler’s Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall (Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics, 1996), with a useful introduction by Cassidy. After digesting the history, readers will enjoy Michael Frayn’s provocative play Copenhagen (London: Methuen, 1998). And the curious story of a former major league baseball player and spy extraordinaire is told by Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (New York: Pantheon, 1994).

On Leo Szilard’s approach to Albert Einstein and Alexander Sachs, and on much else besides, the best source remains Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Knopf, 1975).

CHAPTER FOUR. THE UNITED STATES I: IMAGINING AND BUILDING THE BOMB

Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, Wyden, Day One, Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, Sherwin, A World Destroyed, Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Kevles, The Physicists, and Lamont, The Physicists, tell the American story, from a variety of perspectives. See also the memoirs: Weart and Szilard, Leo Szilard, Compton, Atomic Quest, and Groves, Now it Can Be Told, and a less exalted but interesting one by Harlow W Russ, Project Alberta: The Preparation of the Atomic Bombs for Use in World Wjr II (Los Alamos, NM: Exceptional Books, 1990). Rather technical, but nevertheless very valuable, are Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The New World, 1939—1946, vol. 1 of A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962); and Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940—1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989 [1945]).

On James Conant’s key role in the bomb project, James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), is authoritative and indispensable; for a marvelous study of three leading players in the nuclear weapons’ drama, see Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (New York: Henry Holt, 2002). Oppenheimer alone has inspired several thoughtful treatments, including most recently David C. Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century (New York: Pi Press, 2005); Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Knopf, 2005); and a Thomas Powers review essay, ‘An American Tragedy’, New York Review of Books, 22 Sept. 2005, 73—9. Some of Oppenheimer’s correspondence is available in Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner, eds., Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). For the unhappy denouement of Oppenheimer’s career, consult Philip M. Stern, with Harold P. Green, The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial (New York: Harper and Row, 1969); Richard Polenberg, ed., In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002) ; and especially Priscilla J. McMillan, The Ruin ofJ. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race (New York: Viking,