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Francis Duncan (2) (–2016)

Autor(a) de Rickover and the Nuclear Navy: The Discipline of Technology

Para outros autores com o nome Francis Duncan, veja a página de desambiguação.

5 Works 75 Membros 1 Review

Séries

Obras de Francis Duncan

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
c.1922
Data de falecimento
2016-11-16
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Oak Park, Illinois, USA
Local de falecimento
Rockville, Maryland, USA

Membros

Resenhas

In his 1946 message bidding farewell to the men and women of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves wrote that, with regard to the peacetime applications of their labors, “you have raised the curtain on vistas of a new world.” More than just inspiring the title of Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson’s first volume of the official history of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Groves’s phrase hearkens to the seemingly unlimited possibilities open to humanity at the dawn of the atomic age. As the authors demonstrate, realizing these possibilities not just for Americans but for the entire world lay at the heart of the new agency’s mandate, one that it sought to realize amidst the growing distrust fostered by an incipient cold war.

To tell this story properly, however, requires going back further in time to the federal government’s initial exploration of the potentialities of the atom. In this respect, Hewlett and Anderson’s book is less a history of the AEC than it is a prehistory of it, as the authors concentrate on the massive effort to turn an atomic bomb into a reality. Their detailed account of the early experiments, the establishment of the Manhattan Project, and the project’s efforts to build the bomb take up the first half of the book. While the authors focus on the efforts of the scientists and the administrators to develop a bomb, they also address the scientific progress being made and the complicated negotiations between the United States and their British and Canadian partners on the project. From these pages emerge a story of men racing against time to push scientific boundaries, collect resources, and build massive new industrial enterprises, often in the face of novel and unexpected problems.

The secrecy which shielded the project from public scrutiny came to an end with the dropping of the first bomb on Hiroshima. With the world now aware of the existence of atomic technology, the question became how best to administer it. Here Hewlett and Anderson shift their attention to the various politicians, military officers, and civilian administrators working to define atomic policy, as well as the efforts to establish some sort of peaceful international control over this disconcerting new source of power. The proposals they describe are portrayed as sincere, and help to underscore the options that existed in the aftermath of the war. The failure of an international agreement, though confirmed the growing shift towards an exclusively national control over the new technology, which was formalized with the creation of the AEC in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, the passage and implementation of which the authors cover in their concluding chapters.

As an official history of its subject, Hewlett and Anderson’s book contains all of the advantages and flaws of the form. Based on the enormous wealth of documents generated by the Manhattan Project and the subsequent activities surrounding atomic energy development, it is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to learn about the government’s approach to it. Yet the level of detail about scientific experimentation and bureaucratic maneuvering often make the book a tough read, one only partially lightened by the authors’ clear explanations of oftentimes difficult subjects. Nevertheless, while readers seeking a history of the development of the atomic bomb would be better off turning to Richard Rhodes’s classic [b:The Making of the Atomic Bomb|16884|The Making of the Atomic Bomb|Richard Rhodes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440621221l/16884._SX50_.jpg|105195], Hewlett and Anderson’s work serve as an enduring resource for anyone seeking to understand how the federal government worked to manage the frightening yet promising new possibilities they had unleashed upon the world.
… (mais)
 
Marcado
MacDad | Mar 27, 2020 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
5
Membros
75
Popularidade
#235,804
Avaliação
½ 3.3
Resenhas
1
ISBNs
68
Idiomas
2

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