Dark Sun

The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb

By: Richard Rhodes

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

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.

The A-bomb sage continues

Adept weaving of the atomic bomb development with clear technical descriptions and stirring tales of espionage. Only criticism is the narration, a bit monotone, but more disturbing was the editing, lack of pauses between chapters, paragraphs, etc, making it tough to know when a new concept was being introduced.

Highly Recommend

Rhodes intertwines the history of the Cold War, the politics of the time, espionage, morality and the science of the hydrogen bomb into a well told and fast paced story. As others have commented, it seems to focus more on the espionage of the Soviet Union in stealing the secrets of the atomic bomb than the actual science of the hydrogen bomb. I personally felt it added to the story and the backdrop of the hydrogen bomb, but if that isn’t what you are interested in, it may be off-putting. Overall I didn’t like this quite as much as his first book, but that is a high bar to surpass and I would still highly recommend this as a follow up.

Not as good as the History of Atomic Bomb. Narration could be better.

after reading the previous book by this author, this does not feel that great. still, he provides lots of detailed information on the Russian program, and specifically the development of the hydrogen bomb and the start of the cold war. the narration makes it really hard to listen to this book, it is almost a whisper.

Now It Can Be Fully Told...

Its finally here, the full unabridged story. For years (decades actually) this was only available as a 4 cassette set, and later digital but still only abridged. After the success of Making of Atomic Bomb (1986) this baffled me.

What makes Rhodes telling compelling was this tome dedicates half its length to the espionage from the 'allied' Soviets starting from the start of the Manhattan Project, and worse still the mistaken belief held by the US government that science isn't 'discovered' around the world as intelligent people are everywhere.

So having bought this hardcover in 1995, and the later cassette set (which I would ultimately encode to mp3) I'm sitting in for the full story. The Rest of the Story as one commentator would say.

Very well documented history from many points of view.

Wraps up the whole Nuclear arms debacle in an understandable way. Brings a personable human side to the scientists on both sides.