7/5 stars for how impressed I was with the accomplishment of this book. 3/5 stars for the general reading experience for someone like me who is more interested in history and politics than nuclear physics. But in the end it cannot be anything but 5 stars for this beast of a book.

Boy (or girl), was this an impressive read in sheer scope, ambitiousness and storytelling. The author writes in an appealing style and seamlessly interweaves the technical aspects of pursuing nuclear physics - and ultimately the bomb - with the progress of world political history before and during WW2. At the same time you get a close personal view of the key personalities in the world of physics - not least Oppenheimer and Bohr (of course I’m biased to mention my fellow Dane;-) - and later on the decision makers in the US government.

BUT (because there is a major but..) at the same time the book is so technically complex at times, often spending several pages describing the trial and error of nuclear physics/quantum mechanics, characteristics of individual nuclear atoms etc. that I simply had to skim-read until the author got back to the realm of the English language where ordinary people can keep up. So in a sense the book would have been a better reading-experience FOR ME if it was 30 % shorter and had stuck to the broader lines of physical pioneering and world history. That doesn’t mean that it should be though since this seems like the definitive account of the nuclear bomb.

So.. I rarely spend 3 months finishing a book, but this was surely a mountain to climb due to sheer length (750 closely written pages) and complexity. And my feelings are mixed - but in the end it feels worth my while to have finished the job. But you definitely need to be highly interested in the topic, before I can recommend jumping in to this book :-)

….So next for me now is Benjamin Labatut’s ‘The Maniac’ - which I’m already enjoying immensely - but also feels a bit like young-adult-autofiction after reading Richard Rhodes’ mammoth!