Physics War

An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding: the monumental race to build the first atomic weapons.

Rich in personality, action, confrontation, and deception, The First War of Physics is the first fully realized popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives.

**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award** The definitive history of nuclear weapons—from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the...

New York Times Bestseller An exploration of the age-old complicity between skywatchers and warfighters, from the best-selling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist...

The definitive biography of the brilliant, charismatic, and very human physicist and innovator Enrico Fermi In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of...

From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold story of a renegade group of scientists and spies determined to keep Adolf Hitler from obtaining the ultimate prize: a nuclear bomb. Scientists have always kept secrets. But rarely have the secrets been as vital as they...

From the Marginalian creator and bestselling author Maria Popova, a bold exploration of what makes a meaningful life. "Natasha McElhone narrates Popova's layered prose at a measured pace...and captivates whether she's voicing the concerns of Venus or presenting a simple rhyming couplet." —...

Two bestselling authors first met in a televised Caltech debate on “the future of God,” one an articulate advocate for spirituality, the other a prominent physicist. This remarkable book is the product of that serendipitous encounter and the contentious—but respectful—clash of worldviews...

Dr. Yoshio Nishina is sometimes known as the father of modern nuclear physics in Imperial pre-war Japan. Nishina was a 20th Century Japanese engineer and physicist well respected in Japan. However, he was less known in the West, except among a few American physicists and in Nazi Germany. He led the efforts of Imperial Japan to develop an atomic bomb or A-bomb before and during the second World War (WWII). In 1921, RIKEN provided funding for Nishina to study in Europe. There he met several famous Western physicists. At Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, he worked under Ernest ...

What happens when a young physicist searches for hidden order and finds himself caught between genius, war, politics, and suspicion? Before David Bohm became the visionary thinker of the implicate order, before he challenged quantum orthodoxy, before Einstein, exile, and his later reputation as a scientific mystic, he was a restless student trying to understand the invisible structure beneath reality. This book follows Bohm through his college and young adult years, from Pennsylvania State to Caltech, from Berkeley to the charged intellectual world of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It explores the ...

What truly happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the final days of World War II? Beyond the iconic mushroom cloud images, what do science and history reveal about the events that changed the world forever? In "20 Facts You Didn’t Know About Hiroshima and Nagasaki," a Ph.D. physicist provides a clear, rigorous, and accessible analysis of the nuclear bombings that marked the end of the War in the Pacific. Moving beyond complex physics, this book reaches into the profound human dimension of the catastrophe, answering questions that have persisted for generations. Why did Hiroshima return...

Ninja warriors were masters of stealth and disguise. They could quickly defeat their enemies without raising the alarm. They may not have realized it, but they owed their success to science. Learn how science helped ninjas successfully achieve their secret missions.

Samurai warriors were experts in hand-to-hand combat and fighting from horseback. They may not have realized it, but they owed their success to science. Learn how science helped the samurai to become some of the greatest warriors in history.

No less a figure than Bertrand Russell remarked that Aristotle’s Physics was ‘extremely influential and dominated science until the time of Galileo’. This was despite the fact that this work is as much a collection of ‘lectures on nature’ rather than dealing with the science of physics...

Medieval knights were like armoured tanks in combat. They often made quick work of their enemies. They may not have realized it, but they owed their success to science. Learn how science helped medieval knights win victory!

When voices from the future whisper in your head, you either decide you're losing your mind—or accept you're humanity's last hope for freedom. David Caffery's ordered world shatters the moment he hears her voice. She claims to be family. She claims to be from 2102. And she's asking him to commit an unthinkable act to save millions of lives. But in a war between AI gods fighting across time itself, truth is the first casualty. Every ally could be an enemy. Every coincidence could be manipulation. And David's autistic mind—the very thing that makes him different—might be the key to ...

When gladiators fought in combat, there was usually only one winner. The victor may not have realized it, but he owed his success to science. Learn how science helped gladiators find victory in the arena.

The universe is a dangerous place in John Scalzi's Old Man's War, the first in The Old Man's War series. At seventy-five years old, John Perry is after a fresh start - so, naturally, he joins the army. Earth's military machine can transform elderly recruits, restoring their lost youth. But in...

The birth of a world-changing idea in the middle of a bloodbath Einstein’s War is a riveting exploration of both the beauty of scientific creativity and enduring horrors of human nature. These two great forces battle in a story that culminates with a victory now a century old, the mind...

Physics, the fundamental science of matter and energy, encompasses all levels of nature from the subatomic to the cosmic, and underlies much of the technology around us. Understanding the physics of our universe is an essential aspect of humanity's quest to understand our environment and our place within it. Doing physics enables us to explore the interaction between environment and human society, and can help us to work towards the future sustainability of the planet.

They erased his research. Then they erased him. Now they need him to save the world. Physicist Dean Eckert spent years developing a theory that made powerful institutions deeply uncomfortable. Then his work vanished—scrubbed from databases, stripped from records, buried beneath layers of institutional silence. His career followed. His name followed. The life he built, gone. He should have been forgotten. Then the anomaly appeared. A phenomenon unlike anything in recorded science begins spreading across the planet, warping gravitational fields, destabilizing critical systems, and turning ...