The Neutron's Long Shadow: Legacies of Nuclear Explosives Production in the Manhattan Project

FOREWORD by Michele Gerber, Hanford Nuclear Site historian and author of On the Home Front: "The Neutron's Long Shadow, brought me back to the stark realization that the Hanford Site is a singular, astonishing place that could not even be imagined, were it not already real. The book, with its impeccable photos, all presented in black and white, is an emotional response to Hanford's raw, unsheltered character--blunt and big and muscular."DESCRIPTION: The intellectual adventure of developing the atomic bomb at Los Alamos has been well documented.  But the fact is that 90% of the Manhattan-Project expenditures went to produce the exotic nuclear explosive materials required.  That is the story told here, a story of the brilliant harnessing of American industry to build a coordinated network of huge production plants using technology that was being developed even as the plants themselves were rising.  It is the story of multiple, complex production methods being pursued simultaneously without knowing that any of them would ultimately work, a story of daring gambles and their ultimate redemption.  It is the story of the frantic building of subsequent, larger plants that were worked to the limits of their safe operation during the Cold War arms race.  This is a story told by the author in historical narrative and new high-resolution photographs of fast disappearing relics.THE 20th CENTURY WAR MACHINES TRILOGY by photographer and Cold-War physicist Martin Miller puts into perspective the dark side of humankind's headlong rush into modernity and invests it with visual impact. Triumph and Tragedy, the keystone volume in the series, describes how the five-century rise of science and technology, coupled with the social and political upheaval those changes wrought, resulted in the deadliest century in all human history. The Neutron's Long Shadow relates and illustrates the uncertain development of the atomic bomb in WWII. Weapons of Mass Destruction immerses the reader in the chilling rise and fall of the truly apocalyptic nuclear-weapon arsenals during the last half of the century. Read more