Recruited into the super-secret Manhattan Project while still a teenager, albeit a teenager who had already passed through Harvard, Ted Hall was unquestionably brilliant. But Hall, now an elderly physicist living in England, claims he was also very naive. While working to develop the atomic bomb for the United States, Hall approached Soviet intelligence and proceeded to pass along secrets. His breaches of security, while unknown outside intelligence circles until recently, dwarf the work of better-known Cold War operatives. And what's perhaps most startling is his motivation for giving the Soviets the secrets of the American bomb. Relying on recently declassified materials and interviews with the participants in the plot, Bombshell reads like an inventive spy novel, yet it's entirely true.
"
Bombshellcombines outstanding research and compelling narrative. It's amazing and fascinating--the best report we shall ever have on the
American physicist spy at Los Alamos who stole the plans for the atomic bomb and gave them to the Russians."
--Richard Rhodes, author of
The Making of the Atomic Bomb and
Dark Sun"Albright and Kunstel do an excellent job of clarifying the complex processes involved in making the atomic bomb, pausing even to explain various false starts and unworkable procedures that often preceded the program's periodic breakthroughs".
--Allen Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Book Review