2 billion dollar's worth

I recently finished Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and never has an 880 page hardback seemed so compulsive. It was an impulse lift from the popular science section of Edinburgh's Central Library. However, rather than putting it down again because it was (in every sense) too heavy, I recognised it as a work Roger had pressed on me some time ago, and thought it was worth a punt. It was.

Richard Rhodes has done vast amounts of research, and takes a long run-up to the subject. We are eased in shortly after 1900, and given a deft introduction to a rapidly changing field, peopled, it seems, by a cast of brilliance. I'm familiar with a lot of the physics and the characters though my degree, but I still learned a lot about this era. It's well written too. The better sections read like a novel, and as in a good novel, some well-placed anecdotes enliven the book and stick in the mind. What about Fermi running along the corridor of his lab so that he can measure some short lived isotope? Or Otto Frisch coming close to a critical assembly by leaning over his workbench, thereby reflecting the neutrons with his body? Or a younger Frisch working out fission with his aunt (Lise Meitner) on a Christmas skiing trip?

And it all cost 2 billion dollars.