On July
16, 1945, a fireball 600 feet wide exploded in the sky above a top-secret site
in New Mexico bearing the code-name Trinity. Years later, the chief architect
behind the experiment recalled, "We knew the world would not be the
same."
In
"Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb" (Hill and Wang,
2012), Jonathan Fetter-Vorm has written and illustrated in vivid detail the
race to build, test, and drop the first atomic bombs.
The
effort began in 1939, with the discovery that subatomic particles called
neutrons could be used to break uranium atoms into pieces, a process called
nuclear fission. Scientists around the world soon realized that nuclear
fission, which releases seventy million times more energy than a chemical
reaction, could be used to create an enormously powerful bomb.
American
scientists--many of whom came from Europe--were concerned that the Nazis might
be developing an atomic bomb. They convinced Roosevelt that it was essential
for the U.S. to build the weapon before Hitler did so. The U.S. resolve to
build the bomb--one of the most expensive undertakings that humans had ever
attempted--was solidified when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December,
1941. The man they recruited to lead the effort, which came to be known as the
Manhattan Project, was a brilliant physicist named J. Robert Oppenheimer. For
many, he would become the face of the atomic age, even as he came to have grave
doubts about developing nuclear weapons.
Fetter-Vorm's
explanations and illustrations of the fundamental science of nuclear reactions
and the making of the bomb are among the clearest I have ever read. The
historical details are equally compelling, and Fetter-Vorm does not flinch from
the political and moral consequences of the atomic bomb that have shaped our
lives even to this day.
Readers
who want to dig a little deeper into the history of physics will enjoy another
graphic book, "Feynman" (First Second Books, 2011), written by Jim
Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick. This biography captures the
colorful life and scientific achievements of Nobel Prize winner Richard
Feynman, who also worked on the Manhattan Project.
The
science in "Feynman" can be a challenge for some readers, but Ottaviani
and Myrick manage to channel Feynman's gift for explaining difficult concepts
to non-scientists. And it is no challenge at all to appreciate Feynman as the
wise-cracking, safe-cracking, bongo playing genius who lived life to its
fullest.
