Picturing the bomb

This book presents the first photographic record of the Manhattan Project - the United States Government-sponsored effort to build an atomic device - and its publication coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the development of the atomic bomb.

The compelling photographs from the Manhattan Project, by turns specific, abstract, dramatic, and surreal, offer a multifaceted look at history. Photographs of landscapes and of construction, of scientific experiments and their results, are framed against official portraits and casual snapshots.

In gathering these materials the authors, Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra, have had unprecedented access to the personal archives of many physicists and their families, as Rachel is the granddaughter of Enrico Fermi, one of the key participants in the Manhattan Project.

An introduction by Richard Rhodes, author of the pulitzer prize-winning book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, provides a historical framework for the Manhattan Project. Then, in a series of striking images, the body of the book compares and contrasts the different individuals, activities, and settings that characterized the Manhattan Project.