Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man - Softcover

Norris, Robert S.

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9781586420673: Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586420674 ISBN 13: 9781586420673

Publisher: Steerforth, 2003

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COLONEL LESLIE R. GROVES was a career officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, fresh from overseeing hundreds of military construction projects, including the Pentagon, when he was given the job in September 1942 of building the atomic bomb. In this full-scale biography Norris places Groves at the center of the amazing Manhattan Project story.
Norris contributes much in the way of new information and vital insights to our understanding of how the bomb got built and how the decision was made to drop it on a large population center. Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, writes, “The brilliant engineer who commanded [the Manhattan Project] has never had his due. Groves finally emerges as the historic, tough, larger-than-life leader who made the atomic bomb happen and gave shape to the atomic age.” Groves’s hard work and numerous innovations during World War II also had a lasting imprint on the Cold War that followed. Procedures and practices developed during the Manhattan Project became the building blocks of the “national security state” and the “military-industrial complex.”
“I had always thought of General Leslie Groves as a fringe character in the story of the atomic bomb,” says Seymour Hersh, “a military martinet widely ridiculed by the nuclear physicists. Norris has rewritten the history of the most important event of World War II and in so doing has given us the best account yet of the military colossus that built America’s first nuclear bombs.”

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About the Author:

ROBERT S. NORRIS has been a research associate for almost twenty years at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He has written extensively about the nuclear programs of the United States, the Soviet Union and Russia, Britain, France, and China.

From Library Journal:

The development of the atomic bomb was the greatest scientific achievement (for good or ill) of World War II. Many of the histories of the Manhattan Project, such as Richard Rhodes's well-known The Making of the Atomic Bomb: The Discovery of Nuclear Energy, have focused on the scientists and their important work. But it was just as much an industrial and organizational triumph, and a tough manager was needed to ramrod this complex project through to completion. Groves (1896-1970) had gained his experience through years of projects that allowed him to evaluate construction companies and manufacturing processes. His skills included decisiveness and an ability to size people up, assign them achievable tasks, and push them as hard as necessary. Without his strong leadership and vision, it is doubtful that the bombs could have been used to end the war. In contrast to William Lawren's The General and the Bomb, which focuses strictly on the Manhattan Project, Norris's book has a lot of information about the general's formative earlier life. Norris (Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940) is an experienced nuclear analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and he uses his expertise to good effect. Suitable for the history collections of all libraries. Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn,
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