Awards

• Nominated for Don K. Price Award 2006
• Nominated for Rachel Carson Prize & Ludwik Fleck Prize 2006
• Nominated for Sally Hacker Prize 2006
• Nominated for Sidney Edelstein Prize 2006

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9780674022355

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Reviews

This year brings the 60th anniversary of those two terrifying days in August 1945 when we learned to love and hate the atomic bomb. To mark the milestone, there's no better read than The Bomb: A Life , a wry biography of the weapon that made humankind think about the end of the world. University of St. Andrews history professor Gerard DeGroot reveals everything you ever wanted to know about nuclear weapons, including things you were too terrified to ask. And he has fun doing it...The beauty of DeGroot's work is his knack for the telling detail. In his effort to portray the nuclear arms race as a crazed competition that didn't have to be in 1945 but couldn't be avoided 10 years later, he doesn't let the documentary evidence stifle the story. -- Michael Jacobs USA Today (04/20/2005)

The Bomb chronicles nuclear weapons from their conception in the 1930s through the end of the century, focusing mainly on the decisions made from 1940 to 1962 to develop and use devices of unimaginable destruction and become ironically reliant on them for maintaining peace. Was it the Soviets or the Americans who pushed thecrazy escalation in megatons and warheads? The answer isn't so simple as I once thought. I count this among the best history books I've read. DeGroot's effort clarifies a bewildering and, in retrospect, insane time.--David Schoonmaker American Scientist

Author Information

Gerard J. DeGroot is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His many books include The First World War and A Noble Cause?: America and the Vietnam War.

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