Richard Rhodes Libros

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight. Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.

The riveting secret history of the nuclear arms race and the end of the Cold War, by the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

John James Audubon was America's dominant wildlife artist. His name remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over. This book presents 'bird biographies', journal accounts of his river journeys and hunting trips with the Osage Indians, and a sampling of brief stories that have long been out of print.

In this narrative history of the Einsatzgruppen--killer task forces deployed in Poland and the Soviet Union early in World War II by Himmler's SS--Richard Rhodes argues that Hitler made two separate decisions to murder the Jews of Europe. The first, in July 1941, condemned the eastern European Jews to slaughter by the Einsatzgruppen, who would execute 1.5 million victims between 1941 and 1943 by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar--crimes against humanity that have largely been overlooked or underemphasized by Holocaust historians. The second decision, in December 1941, condemned the Jews of western Europe. By then, Rhodes shows, direct killing had so brutalized the SS perpetrators that a shocked Himmler had ordered the development of less personal means of murder--the notorious gas chambers and crematoriums of the Holocaust's second wave. Rhodes demonstrates further that Hitler and Himmler intended the Jews to be only their first victims; their plan was to open up Russia to German colonization, and to destroy more than 30 million Slavs and members of other ethnic groups. Drawing on newly available material, this is a book that is certain to generate debate, and expand the understanding of the Holocaust

Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.

Celebrated historian Richard Rhodes explores the Spanish Civil War through the stories of the reporters, writers, artists and doctorswho witnessed it

The final volume in Richard Rhodes's prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in the post-Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Richard Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers--Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States--have struggled with new realities. He reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second war in Iraq, assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, and offers advice on how our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia should evolve. Finally, he imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like, as only he can.

John James Audubon came to America as a dapper eighteen-year-old eager to make his fortune. He had a talent for drawing and an interest in birds, and he would spend the next thirty-five years traveling to the remotest regions of his new country–often alone and on foot–to render his avian subjects on paper. The works of art he created gave the world its idea of America. They gave America its idea of itself. Here Richard Rhodes vividly depicts Audubon’s life and career: his epic wanderings; his quest to portray birds in a lifelike way; his long, anguished separations from his adored wife; his ambivalent witness to the vanishing of the wilderness. John James Audubon: The Making of an American is a magnificent achievement.

This updated edition of this essential collection of historic writings by the pre-eminent scientists and historians who bore witness to the birth of the modern nuclear age, now includes President Barack Obama's 2016 statement at Hiroshima, all-new writings from Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, and a new foreword by Cynthia C. Kelly.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author presents this fully authorized--and timely-biography of the Harvard biologist and naturalist who has become a leading voice on the crucial importance to all life of biodiversity and has worked tirelessly to synthesize the fields of science and the humanities in a fruitful way