Here are 100 books that Plutonium fans have personally recommended if you like
Plutonium.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
By the time I was a high-school junior I knew I wanted to be a physicist. As a graduate student in 1950, as the Cold War was heating up, I joined the relatively small team that designed the first hydrogen bomb and got to work with some of the giants of 20th-century physics. It’s been a pleasure to read about this subject as well as to write about it.
Jeremy Bernstein is both an accomplished theoretical physicist and a skilled writer. He has published numerous scientific papers, written insightful articles in the New Yorker, and written many books that engagingly explain technical matters. He knew Robert Oppenheimer at the Institute for Advanced Study when Bernstein was a junior scholar there, and “Oppie” was the Institute’s Director.
It is an illuminating portrait, although not an in-depth biography. I know Bernstein as a fellow physicist and have served as a developmental editor on two of his books (although not this one).
As a former colleague of Oppenheimer's, Jeremy Bernstein has written a biographical profile that is both personal and historical, bringing the reader close to the life and workings of an extraordinary and controversial man. Without Oppenheimer's totally remarkable leadership at Los Alamos, the atomic bomb would not have happened, and World War II would have ended very differently. Bernstein, combining the grace of a New Yorker writer with the insight of a theoretical physicist, draws a fine and fascinating portrait. -Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
By the time I was a high-school junior I knew I wanted to be a physicist. As a graduate student in 1950, as the Cold War was heating up, I joined the relatively small team that designed the first hydrogen bomb and got to work with some of the giants of 20th-century physics. It’s been a pleasure to read about this subject as well as to write about it.
This follow-up to his definitive The Making of the Atomic Bomb covers it all—the people, the physics, and the politics. Richard Rhodes does his research, no question.
The book’s very breadth makes it less engrossing than some books with a narrower focus. Nevertheless, it’s a must for an “H-bomb library.”
Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.
Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.
By the time I was a high-school junior I knew I wanted to be a physicist. As a graduate student in 1950, as the Cold War was heating up, I joined the relatively small team that designed the first hydrogen bomb and got to work with some of the giants of 20th-century physics. It’s been a pleasure to read about this subject as well as to write about it.
From the birth of the Manhattan Project in 1942 until the first test of an H bomb in 1952, Edward Teller was central to the development of a thermonuclear weapon.
He is called the father of the H bomb with good reason. Yet, he is controversial. He made more enemies than friends. His own account of that period is fascinating. I worked with Teller and was a friend.
The fascinating recollections of one of the most brilliant and controversial scientists of the 20th century. . The story of Edward Teller is the story of the twentieth century. Born in Hungary in 1908, Teller witnessed the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism, two world wars, the McCarthy era, and the changing face of big science. A brilliant and controversial figure whose work on nuclear weapons was key to the American war effort, Teller has long believed in freedom through strong defense, a philosophy reflected in his stance on arms control and nuclear policy. These extraordinary recollections at last reveal the…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
By the time I was a high-school junior I knew I wanted to be a physicist. As a graduate student in 1950, as the Cold War was heating up, I joined the relatively small team that designed the first hydrogen bomb and got to work with some of the giants of 20th-century physics. It’s been a pleasure to read about this subject as well as to write about it.
Working on the H bomb occupied only a small part of Fermi's long, productive career (and, accordingly, only a small part of this biography), but for a couple of years, it was an important part of his life, and he was an important contributor to its success.
Named a Best Book of the Year by Bloomberg (Chosen by Philip Tetlock), Booklist’s Top 10 Science Books of the Year, and Shortlisted for Physics World’s Book of the Year
A Major Biography of the Nobel Prize–Winning Physicist, Enrico Fermi, a Leading Architect of the Atomic Age
Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world’s physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called “the Pope” by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass…
Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to human society. Their huge cost robs people in poverty of essential services and support. Since 1981 when I joined a 6700-mile walk across the U.S. and nine other countries to Bethlehem, I have campaigned for disarmament, uncovered extensive deception about their production, and advocated for the millions of people harmed by the radiation released from the production and testing of nuclear weapons. I long for the day when we will not have to live in fear of a nuclear Armageddon.
This book reveals much more than the Silkwood movie (starring Meryl Streep and Cher) dared to. Rashke’s book gave me a guide to uncovering decades of deception at the Hanford plutonium factory in Washington State.
By reporting on several mysterious deaths of people connected to her, The Killing of Karen Silkwood educated me on the perils I could face if I persisted in my investigation.
Karen Silkwood, an employee of the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant, was killed in a car crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in 1974. Silkwood was a union activist concerned about health and safety issues at the plant, and her death at age twenty-eight was considered by many to be highly suspicious. Was it Kerr-McGee's revenge on a troublesome whistle-blower? Or was it part of a much larger conspiracy reaching from the Atomic Energy Commission to the FBI and the CIA?
Richard Rashke leads us through the myriad of charges and countercharges, theories and facts,…
Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to human society. Their huge cost robs people in poverty of essential services and support. Since 1981 when I joined a 6700-mile walk across the U.S. and nine other countries to Bethlehem, I have campaigned for disarmament, uncovered extensive deception about their production, and advocated for the millions of people harmed by the radiation released from the production and testing of nuclear weapons. I long for the day when we will not have to live in fear of a nuclear Armageddon.
Iverson’s memoir mirrors my own experience of growing up near nuclear weapons sites, only to find out later the dangers we were exposed to as children.
Iverson grew up near the Rocky Flats plant outside of Denver. It machined plutonium produced at Hanford into the cores of U.S. nuclear weapons. As she dug into the secret history of Rocky Flats, she uncovers family secrets—eerily like my own memoir.
“An intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security.”—Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
A shocking account of the government’s attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic waste released by a secret nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and a community’s vain search for justice—soon to be a feature documentary
Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
When I was 10, my family moved to Richland, Washington, next to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. My father worked as a Bechtel engineer on the Fast Flux (Sodium) Test Facility. I started studying the nuclear power industry as an undergraduate. As a graduate student, I published my first paper on the operation of an international uranium cartel. Most of my research at Stanford University and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD has focused on the economics of the nuclear power industry, including waste management. Since my retirement in 2018, I have worked with the (US) National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on the cleanup of the mixed radioactive-hazardous waste at Hanford.
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’ve been drawn to mad scientists since watching Looney Tunes cartoons. Marvin the Martian and Wile E. Coyote (who always emphasized his middle initial and title: Genius) were always my stars. And those Acme gadgets! I thought, One day, Coyote will get that pesky Road Runner! Fast forward to adulthood, and I’ve figured out I’m not only queer but on the spectrum. I’ve channeled my atypicality into my nerdy writing—queer teens who develop superpowers in Queeroes, a superhero-obsessed “DNA normal” heroine in Generation Manifestation, and a neurodivergent time-looper inThe Timematician. One day, with the right Acme device, I still plan to rule the world. Genius!
Given my belief that Thanos had a point (what science-math-oriented person can’t tremble at the algorithm of over-population?), it’s no surprise I enjoyed an anthology of different takes on mad scientists and what drives them. I got my fix of humorously boastful ego-maniacs, such as Professor Incognito’s itemized “apology” to his girlfriend (with attempted sincerity because of their couple’s therapist). And the variety of these tales exposed me to a bevy of villainy, from a psychologist who uses the “soft” sciences to unleash the insanity within stable scientists because “everyone deserves the opportunity to go mad” to a side-hustling villainy coach whose budget forces her to choose between new tech plating or weapons-grade plutonium. What’s a would-be world conqueror to do? Relatable.
From Victor Frankenstein to Lex Luthor, from Dr. Moreau to Dr. Doom, readers have long been fascinated by insane plans for world domination and the madmen who devise them. Typically, we see these villains through the eyes of good guys. This anthology, however, explores the world of mad scientists and evil geniuses - from their own wonderfully twisted point of view. An all-star roster of bestselling authors - including Diana Gabaldon, Daniel Wilson, Austin Grossman, Naomi Novik, and Seanan McGuire...twenty-two great storytellers all told - have produced a fabulous assortment of stories guaranteed to provide readers with hour after hour…
Fresh out of journalism school I stumbled on a strike at a machine shop in Pilsen, a neighborhood once home to Chicago’s most famous labor struggles, by then becoming a hip gentrified enclave. Drinking steaming atole with Polish, Mexican, and Puerto Rican workers in a frigid Chicago winter, I was captivated by the solidarity and determination to fight for their jobs and rights, in what appeared to be a losing battle. After covering labor struggles by Puerto Rican teachers, Mexican miners, Colombian bottlers, Chicago warehouse workers, and many others, my enthusiasm for such stories is constantly reignited -- by the workers fighting against all odds and the writers telling their stories, including those featured here.
In the nondescript yet fortified facility on dusty ranchland at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, workers toiled in strange conditions making a mysterious product, unknown even to them. Turns out they were manufacturing plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons, and terrifying radioactive fires eventually laid bare the dire toll of the Cold War arms race on Colorado’s people and land. Chemical companies and the government conspired to avoid scrutiny, ensure obedience and keep illegally dumping toxic waste. Yet solidarity was born among workers caught between their need for a job and their fear and outrage at being used as throw-away cogs in a doomed war machine.
This book examines the sobering realities associated with the participation of ordinary Americans in the development of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. A former Chicago Tribune reporter and one-time editor of 'The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists', Len Ackland explores the fascinating story of Rocky Flats, Colorado for the first time. He skilfully weaves together the experiences of individuals with clear explanations of nuclear weapons technology , the dangers posed by plutonium and radiation, and the bitter fight between government agencies over environmental degradation.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Growing up, I often told neighborhood kids about my father’s internment, what he remembered of Camp Crystal City, Texas, where he spent three years, age seven to ten, going to school, swimming, playing in nearby orchards, and other normal experiences—except for the barbed wire, guard towers, and lack of freedom. Later, I wanted to know more and learned that what happened to my family can happen to anybody else if they are feared. More recently, families have been ripped apart, children put in cages, and countless people treated as less than human. My book reminds us of what can happen when fear leads to calling those among us enemies or worse.
As part of the American History Series, I thoroughly enjoyed Winkler’s book because it provides solid general coverage of America’s “arsenal of democracy”—the mobilization for war, along with an examination of our society at war including mood and morale along with shortages and controls; the book also has a chapter dealing with outsiders and ethnic groups and finally the last chapter is dedicated to politics and war.
I find the book provides excellent coverage of major home front issued during the war. I would highly recommend to any reader who wants to know more about the United States home front during the war.
New scholarship on World War II continues to broaden our understanding. With each passing year we know more about the triumphs and the tragedies of America's involvement in the momentous conflict. Tapping into this greater awareness of the accomplishments of both soldiers and civilians and a better recognition of the consequences of decisions made, Allan Winkler presents the third edition of his highly popular series volume.
Informed by the latest historical literature and featuring many new thoughtfully chosen photographs, the third edition of Home Front U.S.A. continues to ponder the question of "the good war," the moral implications of the…
