This weekend, millions of people turned out to see Oppenheimer—and even with a three-hour runtime, there’s still much more to learn.
While I haven’t seen the film yet (thanks to an infant at home), I have been reading about nuclear weapons for years, so I compiled some of the books I’d recommend to find out more about the subject.
The obvious starter, given Nolan adapted the book for his film, but also an absolute classic in the field. Oppenheimer’s life was odd by any measure even before nuclear weapons entered the picture, and Sherwin and Bird spend enough time on his formative years that you understand the intense contradictions at work when he enters the Manhattan Project (and later turns more skeptical of the bomb). Marvelously written and thoroughly researched.
The other big classic in the field, Rhodes provides a more expansive view of the Manhattan Project itself, covering not just Los Alamos but also the efforts at Oak Ridge and Hanford to both refine Uranium to weapons-grade and transmute it to Plutonium. Not quite as narratively-glossy as the Oppenheimer biography, partially for being much more detailed on the technical aspects. But still a hell of a read, especially in the final section recounting the brutal effects of the bombs dropped on Japan.
Before he got kicked out of the defense establishment for leaking the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg worked his way in by studying nuclear strategy and safeguards. Towards the end of his life he wrote this thoughtful book on the dangers of accidental nuclear escalation; a system designed to launch weapons even in the midst of nuclear war is strongly predisposed to launch them in any other confusion or heightened crisis. He also sketches out the absurd over-murder of many war plans, his attempts with McNamara and others to bring at least some reason to the process, and how US policy transitioned from the strategic bombing of WWII to the worldwide mass-murder of a potential WWIII.
I am excited to hear that the Oppenheimer film features Evil Truman, and this book expounds on that angle by seeking to understand why they dropped the bomb and what psychological effect it had on US leadership at the dawning of the Cold War. In the aftermath of FDR’s long-coming death that he was totally unprepared for—and dependent on a bevy of long-time FDR aides and staff—Truman compensated by trying to appear decisive and strong. He didn’t really make the decision to drop the bombs since the process was self-perpetuating at that point, but eagerly grabbed the mantle
For more on nuclear policy, Fred Kaplan’s The Bomb is an excellent look at the warring schools of thought and how they’ve shaped our response and attack plans throughout the Cold War and since.
For our plans to survive nuclear war, Garett Groff’s Raven Rock covers the bunkers and other hardened facilities (at least two in mountains) we had for continuity of government.
For why those plans wouldn’t matter, Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth is grim reading, but gets across why a nuclear war would be almost unimaginably horrific. By the end, you’ll realize you wouldn’t likely survive one—and be glad for it.
For the layers of secrecy around nuclear weapons, Alex Wallerstein’s Restricted Data is a more academic but interesting look at how much of the information was “born secret” under a wholly-novel approach to classification. And for how that same obsessive approach to secrecy infected much of national policy, Garry Willis’ Bomb Power is a good if imperfect treatment of the subject.
For the development of the hydrogen bomb, Richard Rhodes’ Dark Sunis still the standard work, and goes into the much more theoretically thorny efforts to produce the bomb. While the nuclear bomb was almost simultaneously imagined across the globe as people heard of fission’s discovery, producing a thermonuclear reaction was much harder—and indeed, Teller’s first theoretical approach was shown to be a failure.
For how the H-Bomb enabled ICBMs, Neil Sheehan’s A Fiery Peace in a Cold War covers Bernard Schriever’s quest for 1000+ mile rockets. He was one of the first to realize that once you have megaton-sized bombs, your rockets don’t have to be very accurate—so you can fling them much, much further.
For perhaps our closest brush with catastrophe, Martin Sherwin’s Gambling with Armageddon is a meticulous look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how the situation was even more dangerous than many at the time realized. Also fascinating as a close-reading of the JFK administration’s deliberation process, and how they slowly opened themselves up to non-attack strategies that averted nuclear war.
For a look at another atomic weapons program, The Samson Option by Seymour Hersh is a dishy read on the still-unacknowledged Israeli weapons program, and how newer methods like mechanical separation (using centrifuges) supplanted the older gaseous, electromagnetic, and thermal techniques.
For a larger look at the Cold War, America’s Cold War by Campbell Craig and Frederik Logevall is the best overview I’ve read so far—much better than the Gaddis work usually pushed. Craig and Logevall provide an excellent story of the period, and compellingly chronicle how domestic political pressures drove America’s foreign policy throughout the conflict.