Examines how Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi, Bohr, Lawrence, Bethe, Rabi, Szilard, and Compton worked together in secret wartime laboratories to build the first atomic bomb, and how the results of their creation changed their lives. Many books have tried to shed light on why the greatest minds of 20th century physics designed the most horrific weapon in history. Brian VanDeMark tries a new tack in Pandora's Keepers : the group biography. Instead of focusing on just Oppenheimer, or Bohr, or Teller, this book encompasses the nine men at the core of the United States' effort to build an atomic bomb. By avoiding individual stories, he reveals that these men collectively were more than the sum of their brilliant parts. It was no secret that Hitler was attempting to achieve nuclear fission, and many of the nine were Europeans who had seen the horrors of the Third Reich up close. Beyond any care for ethics or morals, they wanted to beat Hitler to the Bomb. But though they functioned as a scientific juggernaut together, some of the men suffered pangs of anxiety when alone. Leo Szilard, for instance, feared the results of his early experiments. Szilard flipped the switch, saw the dreaded pulses, and watched them for several minutes with mounting horror.... "That night," Szilard later recalled, "there was very little doubt in my mind that the world was headed for grief." Readers of Richard Rhodes' classic Making of the Atomic Bomb will find some new insights here as VanDeMark casts a wide net for relevant details. Pandora's Keepers tells this familiar story with new energy and immediacy, bringing to life the difficult drama of science in wartime. --Therese Littleton *Starred Review* So thorough is the popular literature about the creation of the fission and fusion bombs--anchored by Richard Rhodes' standards, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986) and Dark Star (1995)--that an entirely novel presentation is hardly possible. However, a synthesis such as this one offers an incisive map to the principal roads to the dawn and early morning of the nuclear age. VanDeMark depicts the friendships forged among the fascinating and sometimes perturbing scientists as they struggled to come to grips with the implications of making the annihilating weapon. The author also emphasizes personality traits, such as Oppenheimer's intolerance of fools or Teller's sensitivity, which shaped such signal events as Oppenheimer's loyalty hearing in 1954. They, plus Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Ernest Lawrence, I. I. Rabi, and Arthur Compton, interlocked closely in brilliant-brained curiosity about how to build an atom bomb, and then argued intensely about what to do with it. VanDeMark's tracing of their wrestling with this tree-of-knowledge dilemma works to humanize the story of the first atom bomb and is also a superb gateway to discovering its myriad technical and moral aspects. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "...enthralling...a compelling recreation...this is the work of a first-rate historian who enlarges our view of great twentieth-century developments." -- Robert Dallek, author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 "The best ever characterization of the men who designed the atomic bomb." -- Hans Bethe, Wendell Anderson Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics