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The Making of the Atomic Bomb cover

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes

Popular Science

Rhodes's Pulitzer-winning narrative follows the physics, personalities, and politics that produced the first nuclear weapon, from Rutherford's lab through Trinity. Karpathy rated it five stars on Goodreads, noting the exponential jump in destructive energy density—from chemical to nuclear—as a recurring mental model for discontinuous technological leaps.

Endorsed By

2 People
  • Andrej Karpathy

    Physics / history-of-science stack — Karpathy's five-star Goodreads read; the Manhattan Project as a case study in discontinuous exponential jumps in capability.

    x.com

  • Chris Dixon
    “best book I read this year both in terms of learning”

    From the a16z 'What We're Reading' winter 2018 list, with Chris Dixon's comment.

    a16z.com