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Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 15356
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 736
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 0684824140
Dewey Decimal Number: 623.45119
EAN: 9780684824147
ASIN: 0684824140
Publication Date: August 6, 1996
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Condition: NEW, UNREAD - COUPLE OF LIGHT CREASES BACK COVER CORNER
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Amazon.com
An engrossing history of the scientific discoveries, political maneuverings, and cold-war espionage leading to the creation of mankind's most destructive weapon. Includes 94 archival photographs and a glossary with brief descriptions of the hundreds of people interviewed and discussed in the book. Author Richard Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his previous atomic tome, The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
A Dark Sun and a Cold War... February 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Richard Rhodes' 1995 "Dark Sun" is the well-written and provocative sequel to his Pulizter Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." "Dark Sun", with some overlap, picks up the story with intertwined narratives about the making of the thermonuclear bomb, the espionage that allowed the Soviets to keep pace, and the Cold War atmosphere in which it all took place. One need not agree with all of Rhodes' conclusions to appreciate the depth of his research and the span of his narrative.
Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the Second World War, the American scientific and policy communities were split over the necessity for the follow-on development of a hydrogen bomb. Many of the original Manhatten Project scientists were shocked by the results of the atomic bomb and could scarcely conceive that a more destructive weapon might be useful. The result would be painful infighting, not least between Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, the leading scientific advocates against and for the hydrogen bomb.
For U.S. policy-makers, the fragile wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was already in tatters. Russia's brutal imposition of communist rule in Eastern Europe, its paranoid security policies, and its own rapid bomb development program put the Truman Administration in the political bind of having to compete with the Soviet Union whether it wanted to or not.
Rhodes does an excellent job tracing the Soviet nuclear weapons program through the efforts of its leading scientists, every bit the equal of their western counterparts and materially aided by their secret knowledge of the work that had already been accomplished in the Manhatten Project. Soviet espionage inside the U.S. and British nuclear programs saved years of work, enabling the Russians to field an atomic bomb by 1949 and a hydrogen bomb by 1955, much faster than predicted.
Rhodes' view of the subsequent arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the state of nuclear deterrence that was its outcome, is dark and pessimistic. In his undoubted horror at what might have happened, he rather fails to give credit to policy-makers for what did not happen, a nuclear exchange. Rhodes' claim that a more peaceful alternative history to the Cold War was prevented by aggressive US post-war policy is not confirmed by much of Cold War scholarship since 1995. Nevertheless, "Dark Sun" is highly recommended to students of the Cold War, not least for its clear lay-person explanation of the possibilities of the hydrogen bomb.
A worthy follow-on to "The Making of the Atomic Bomb: January 11, 2008
"Dark Sun" is primarily NOT an overview of the development of the hydrogen bomb. Instead, it is a great fusion (no pun intended) of the people, events and fears of the post-Hiroshima world that motivated the development of the "super" in both the US and the USSR, and the global situation created by these programs.
Central in this presentation is the espionage program of the USSR, culminating in the demonstration of fission and fusion bombs, and the Rosenberg trial. How the networks were established and operated, and how they moved information is beautifully described. (Contrary to much popular opinion, it appears the US had the Rosenbergs cold.)
When compared to "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," there is relatively little technical detail in "Dark Sun." I surmise the reason for this is simple: details are (quite rightly) highly classified because a hydrogen bomb is probably a lot simpler to construct than the fission trigger described. (As any number of smaller countries have found, production of fissile material is the biggest barrier to making a bomb.) Nevertheless, readers curious about early fusion devices will find themselves rewarded by this book.
What makes this a great tale is Rhodes ability to put together a story of people and events, and interpret them in human terms that any reader will appreciate.
 Not an Impressive Follow-up August 7, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The Pulitzer Prize-winning treatise "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (1987) was the well-deserved claim-to-fame for American journalist and historian Richard Rhodes. The deservedly eminent nuclear pundit's follow-up book, Dark Sun (1995), attempts to provide an accurate historical account of the hydrogen bomb's development. The book is written for a non-expert audience, yet still provides enough technical information to give the reader a basic understanding of nuclear technology without inducing a migraine headache. Dark Sun aims to elucidate the technical achievement, political chicanery, and ethical controversy surrounding the production of thermonuclear weapons.
In the first section of the book, Rhodes uses declassified U.S. archive documents to trace the historical development of the hydrogen bomb from the discovery of fission to the first thermonuclear detonation in 1952. Rhodes does not focus on the ethical dilemmas per se; nonetheless, three of them feature prominently throughout the book. The first of those questions is probably the most obvious: given their indiscriminate and immensely destructive nature, should these weapons ever have been developed in the first place? Repeating a similar discussion from "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (almost verbatim) he recounts the Scientists' understandably conflicted feelings. But Rhodes makes no effort to disguise his obvious disdain for both Edward Teller and his brainchild, believing the bomb's only function to be committing "omnicide".
The second portion of Dark Sun deals with the Soviet's nuclear espionage program, whose roots extend back to World War II. Rhodes argues that Soviet technical advancement depended almost entirely on espionage; as such, he uses newly (early 1990s) declassified KGB documents to show how effective the Soviets were in assuring that virtually every American breakthrough was quickly mirrored in the Soviet Union. Rhodes argues that this seemingly fluid transfer of technology and the subsequent success of the Soviet program would only have been possible with the help of certain individuals. He argues that Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs and/or "Perseus" were sending the Soviets fusion-bomb designs (mainly Teller's) as early as 1946. During the early 1990s, former NKVD agent Pavel Sudoplatov alleged that Robert Oppenheimer himself was a source of information, but Rhodes goes out of his way to convince the reader that, contrary to Teller's allegations, Oppenheimer was an innocent victim of the political brouhaha accompanying the McCarthy-driven "red scare". The espionage section culminates in the Rosenberg's execution in 1953 for treason, a sentence Rhodes finds murderously unfair. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the execution was in fact a political memorandum to the Soviets stating that the United States' takes its national security seriously. In hindsight, failure to exact harsh punishment would have demonstrated a lack in resolve and would have been viewed as proof-positive that the U.S. is so weak that it cannot even bring known spies to justice. This in-turn would probably have resulted in a dramatic increase in Soviet espionage activity.
The concepts of espionage and technology transfer gives rise to the first moral quandary: horizontal proliferation. Rhodes does a brilliant job of recounting the ethical dilemmas faced by scientists and policy makers at the time. The willingness of American scientists to "betray their country" and pass on nuclear secrets to the Soviets can be understood if one pictures the geopolitical attitudes at the time (the US and Russia just fought a war as allies) and if one viewed nuclear hegemony as catastrophically destabilizing. For policy makers the primary question was (and still is) one of usage: against whom and under what conditions should these weapons be used? Rhodes does a marvelous job of describing the personal sentiments and interpersonal relationships of those involved. The political struggle between Oppenheimer and Teller regarding leadership and nuclear policy is discussed ad nauseam. Nevertheless, Rhodes makes a very convincing argument that Teller's obstinate refusal to compromise on bomb design severely jeopardized the H-bomb's development. In fact the project would have been scrapped, were it not for Marshall Holloway, Cornelius Everett, Carson Mark, and Stanislaw Ulam.
Dark Sun's final section concerns events during the Cold War, from the blockade of Berlin to the Korean War and how these incidents set the tone for the ensuing arms-race. While it is relatively clear that neither side wished for war, many on both sides perceived the looming cataclysm as all but inevitable. Rhodes makes some controversial assertions about U.S. Cold War military doctrine, specifically, what he regards as the potentially catastrophic risks run by the Strategic Air Command. He suggests that General Curtis E. LeMay had the ability to start World War III at a whim, a notion that unrealistically marginalizes the available safety protocols and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of contingency measures.
Contrary to the rest of his historically accurate exposition, Rhodes' hypothesis that the world teetered on the brink of nuclear holocaust during the first decade of the Cold War is both logically flawed and historically inaccurate. In point of fact, the scarcity of deliverable Soviet nuclear weapons in the ten years following WWII suggests that the only ones facing potential annihilation were the Soviets, at least until 1955 (W. Lambers - Nuclear Weapons). By Rhodes own admission, it was during that particular period of time that the United States' arsenal grew to several thousand deliverable nuclear weapons. This overwhelming advantage encouraged hawkish leaders like General LeMay to consider a preemptive strike against the Soviet's infantile nuclear capability. The possibility of a preventative strike against the budding Soviet arsenal delineates one final ethical dilemma that one might derive from Dark Sun: Would a preemptive strike against Soviet nuclear facilities in the late 1940s or early 1950s have been preferable to a Cold War that endured for half a century, risked the lives of millions (possibly billions), and left most of the Eurasian continent in economic shambles? Not to mention the number of under-developed countries around the world, formerly in one of the "spheres of influence" that still struggle with economic stagnation and relentless civil-conflict, fueled by the deluge of surplus Russian small-arms. Is all of that worth 100,000 lives? 200,000? Half a million? Opinions will vary; needless to say Dark Sun does not have the answer.
Rhodes takes on the ambitious task of trying to show both the American and Soviet perspectives. This was a mistake because it resulted in the sacrifice of coherency in favor of inclusivity. Dark Sun's discussion of the Soviet perspective suffers from a dire lack of supporting documentation, which only serves to detract from the book's overall quality. Rhodes should have limited his coverage of the Soviet program to the American point of view. Stalin and the Bomb by David Holloway does a much better job of analyzing the Soviet experience.
While its simultaneous coverage of American and Soviet endeavors to acquire a fusion weapon is unparalleled, Rhodes falls short of his reputed narrative brilliance evinced in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". The primary reason for this dearth in quality is the lack of information actually pertaining to thermonuclear weapons or their technical development.
Dark Sun has its shortcomings and does not contain much information that has not already been covered by scholars like Eric Rosenberg or Lawrence Freedman. Nevertheless, Rhodes makes excellent use of interviews and declassified documents, successfully demonstrating that the H-Bomb was not a spontaneous development, but rather the culmination of a series of technical achievements, strategic perceptions and policy directives.
Very disappointing; where was the story of the H-bomb? August 17, 2006
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
The title of this book is a misnomer as there is very little about the making of the hydrogen bomb in it. I can't remember the last time I was this disappointed in a book. There are hundreds of pages spent detailing the Soviet spy program during WWII while the USA was trying to build the atomic bomb. The scientists and their contacts and where they met and what they said to each other and what the Soviet scientists did with the information and on and on in mind-numbing minutiae. This information is all well and good, but that's not why I bought the book. The hydrogen bomb isn't touched on for 350 or 400 pages and then it still seems to spend more time on the Soviets and their attempts to catch up to the American program.
The writing is fine, if not stimulating, it just seems to be off track most of the time. I wanted to read about Teller, Oppenheimer, Ulam, Feynman and all the rest and their conversations, disagreements, failures and ultimate successes in creating the hydrogen bomb. What I got was a heavy dose of Klaus Fuchs and the rest who stole every item they could and sold it to the Russians. This is an important story, but it's not the one I wanted to read about and not the story the book purported to tell.
THREE DIFFERENT STORIES IN ONE April 2, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
While I did not agree with many of the author's opinions and analyses, I must say 'Dark Sun' was a fairly enjoyable read. Rhodes really tells it as three different stories in one volume: a story of science, a story of espionage, and one of cold war history.
The scientific history traces the making of the bomb itself and culminates with the sucessful test of the first bomb by the US in 1952; a blast which turned out to be far larger than expected. I am not very technical, so I can't vouch for accuracy here, but the explanations were about as clear as can be given to the non-expert.
The espionage history begins in WWII itself and concludes with the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953. Rhodes sides with many others in finding the executions unfair, but it seems to me that those who give secrets to foreign agents deserve what they get. The spies should not get off the hook because the Soviets were allies during the war. Stalin's Russia was committed to our destruction and so could never be considered a true ally, and the prosecuters were right that commuting the sentence would send the wrong message to the Soviets - that we were too weak to even execute known spies.
The third part of this book covers the cold war during the period. We learn how tensions from the Berlin blockade to China and then Korea accelerated the race for a super bomb. Neither side wished for war, but felt one was perhaps inevitable.
Rhodes does not like Teller or the hydrogen bomb and believes the project was unnecessary, as we had plenty of A-bombs. But would it have helped our image or sense of security had the Russians got the super first? Would US restraint have stopped the Soviets? I doubt it. Truman was right to approve the plan quickly and override the scientists' objections. The hydrogen bomb was inevitable.
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