94 Books Like Creating the New World

This is one of the best books ever written! It won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, the National Book, and the National Book Critics Circle Awards. It traces the history of nuclear weapons from the discovery of nuclear fission through the Manhattan Project.

This epic (i.e., very long!) work describes the science, people, and politics that led to the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of the first nuclear weapon. The book reads like an H.G. Wells novel, writing about the actors in this chronicle of the scientists who enhanced quantum theory and applied it to thermonuclear fission, including Bohr, Fermi, Lawrence, Oppenheimer, Planck, Szilard, Teller, and von Neumann: the characters in the Oppenheimer film. Even if you do not finish it, you must start it! 

This book outlines the history of the nuclear power industry in the US from the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, less than one year after the denotations of the highly enriched uranium bomb over Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and the plutonium bomb over Nagasaki (9 August 1945) to 1968.

It describes the development of the Nuclear Steam Supply System and its supply chain, as well as the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to the chemical separation of plutonium. Its objective is to determine whether there are any violations of American antitrust laws. It is full of naïve optimism, tables, and hand-drawn charts that give the reader a feeling of what American scientists and engineers believed the future would hold before the events of 1968.

I am captivated by the details in this book and refer to it again and again in my research because it discusses employment in many sectors of the nuclear power industry. After reviewing 19 studies of nuclear industry employment, it allocates the construction costs of a Pressurized Water Reactor known as the System 80+, the basis of the South Korean APR1400, to labor and other expenses following the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS).

It aggregates these expenses into industries and then uses the US Bureau of Census labor cost data to determine how many employees are directly supported by the labor expenses in each industry. Further, it discusses how different macroeconomic (input-output and computable general equilibrium) models forecast indirect and induced employment in a nation’s economy as a whole.

This engaging book documents the diffusion of nuclear power from both technological and national perspectives. Its working hypothesis is that nuclear power is the result of both the development of nuclear weapons and the development of peaceful uses of the technology in generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes. Because of this dual use, the authors believe that its development did not follow an economic logic.

Rather than explaining economic motivations, it analyzes the patterns of nuclear power diffusion from its origins to the emergence of advanced nuclear, so-called fourth-generation technologies and small modular reactors. There were disruptions in this diffusion: the accidents of Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima in 2011, which effectively ended the construction of new nuclear power plants outside of China and Russia.

This book, written for lay readers, was originally published in France, which generates 40% of its electricity from nuclear power. It is a deep dive into electricity generation (megawatts) and nuclear weapons (megatons). The book my colleague and I wrote is, in a sense, an update emphasizing the developments of the last decade in fail-safe reactors.  In these so-called small modular reactors, safety is controlled by laws of physics (gravity drives convection, driving cooling that never turns off), and construction techniques go beyond expensive one-of-a-kind reactors to the cost-controlled modular construction technologies pioneered in aerospace industries and the like. 

Megawatts and Megatons are tough and, at times, uncomfortable topics to consider. However, democratic societies need informed citizens to function effectively. We should make up our own minds about issues. We cannot leave it to a few specialists or loud voices to tell us what to think.  

I’m always impressed by writers who are able to dream up an original plot, and then make that plot come alive on the page.

The book tells the story of three generations of Russian women in the second half of the twentieth century. It’s a very unusual blend of Sci-fi, geopolitical history, time travel, and moral dilemmas. A tall order, but the book succeeds in weaving together these narrative strands in a way that feels natural and effortless, while evoking questions about our complex relationship with the notion of scientific progress.

I love this book’s comprehensive nature, but I do not agree with all of its assumptions. There is no other book that compares the costs of nuclear electricity generation with other generating methods, including coal and gas with and without carbon capture and storage, onshore and offshore wind, utility-scale and residential solar photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, hydro, biomass, geothermal, lithium batteries, and hydrogen fuel cells.

The costs of these technologies were provided by experts from 23 of the International Energy Agency (IEA) member countries, four members of the Nuclear Energy Agency who are not members of the IEA, and publicly available data for China and India. (There were nine editions published in 1981, 1984, 1989, 1992, 1998, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020; there should be a 10th edition in 2025). 

This collection of Katsumata’s manga for legendary gekiga magazine Garo and others is a powerful graphic bridge between the politics and reality of this world, and the creatures and legends of the other. Katsumata takes us from the transitory and dangerous lives of nuclear workers at Fukushima Daiichi (decades before the 2011 disaster) to the tough and haunted lands of Tohoku (North East Japan) in the early twentieth century. Lonely kappa monsters, tanuki, and fox spirits feature as sympathetic lead characters, shapeshifting and conjuring a version of Fukushima and Tohoku that dazzled and inspired me.

James Mahaffey is an American physicist who worked in the nuclear industry for many years.

Atomic Accidents is his engaging account of what happens when something goes badly wrong. What I particularly like is that it is written from the perspective of someone who completely understands the science and who is also well informed by his first-hand experience of working with nuclear technology.

Although Mahaffey is clearly a supporter of nuclear research and the nuclear industry, the book presents an objective balanced picture, acknowledging the risks of nuclear technology, but placing the scale of those risks into context. The book is full of interesting stories and offers some reassurance that the nuclear industry is able to learn from the mistakes of the past.

My father and I were both speechless after reading this book. We were unable to put into words our rage at this nuclear energy cover-up. Instead of developing clean nuclear energy that could fuel the world, the world pursued nuclear energy that could destroy humanity. There is enough thorium to fuel the world and beyond for centuries. However, it cannot be used to make bombs. With the world in an energy crisis, we hoped writing letters to the Senator of Kentucky would give life to the idea of using thorium once again. Sadly, some only care about destroying cities. Everyone should read this book and learn about the alternative to uranium.