In this brilliant and gripping medical detective story. Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. In a new Afterword for the paperback, Rhodes reports the latest U.S. and worldwide developments of a burgeoning global threat.

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.

"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award"
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after its initial publication, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb "remains the seminal and complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.
Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly--or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the bomb, with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers--Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann--stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.
Richard Rhodes gives the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb "is a narrative tour de force and a document with literary power commensurate with its subject.

With a brand new introduction from the author, this is the complete story of how the bomb was developed. It is told in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight. Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been compared in its sweep and importance to William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de forceand a document as powerful as its subject.

A "meticulously researched" (The New York Times Book Review) examination of energy transitions over time and an exploration of the current challenges presented by global warming, a surging world population, and renewable energy-from Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes. People have lived and died, businesses have prospered and failed, and nations have risen to world power and declined, all over energy challenges. Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. "Entertaining and informative...a powerful look at the importance of science" (NPR.org), Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford. In his "magisterial history...a tour de force of popular science" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Rhodes shows how breakthroughs in energy production occurred; from animal and waterpower to the steam engine, from internal-combustion to the electric motor. He looks at the current energy landscape, with a focus on how wind energy is competing for dominance with cast supplies of coal and natural gas. He also addresses the specter of global warming, and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100. Human beings have confronted the problem of how to draw energy from raw material since the beginning of time. Each invention, each discovery, each adaptation brought further challenges, and through such transformations, we arrived at where we are today. "A beautifully written, often inspiring saga of ingenuity and progress...Energy brings facts, context, and clarity to a key, often contentious subject" (Booklist, starred review).

In 1846 several hundred wagons set out from Independence, Missouri, to follow the California Trail nearly 2,000 miles across unpopulated prairies, up sluggish and seemingly endless rivers, and through the Rocky Mountains over the Continental Divide. There, where the water flowed west to the far Pacific, the more prudent emigrants swung north through present-day Idaho, though that was the longer way west. One group, the Donner Party, braver or more foolhardy than the rest, chose an untried route that would shorten the distance. It did. It also subjected them to obstacles so formidable that it cost many of them their lives. Yet it preserved their names and the story of their travail down through history-crowded years. No work of fiction has rendered this remarkable epic of ordeal with more vividness and power than Richard Rhodes's novel of the Donner Party, The Ungodly. Upon its initial printing in 1973, Rhodes's masterful tale was praised for its realistic and gripping depiction of the struggles faced by that ill-fated group of men, women, and children. Now, more than thirty years later, Stanford University Press has reissued this harrowing and haunting novel. The Ungodly is an unforgettable story of terrible hardship and awesome courage-a story that increases our understanding of what kind of people made this nation and what a full and immeasurable price they paid.

This updated edition of this essential collection of historic writings by the pre-eminent scientists and historians who bore witness to the birth of the modern nuclear age now includes President Barack Obama's 2016 statement at Hiroshima, all-new writings from Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, and a new foreword by Cynthia C. Kelly.Born out of a small research program that began in 1939, the Manhattan Project would eventually employ more than 130,000 people and cost a total of nearly $2 billion--all operating entirely under a shroud of secrecy. This groundbreaking collection of essays, articles, documents, and excerpts from history, biographies, plays, novels, letters, and oral histories, newly updated on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is the first ever to source such primary history about the creation of the atomic bomb. Included is President Barak Obama's 2016 statement at Hiroshima, as well as new perspectives from hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) and the mayors of Hisorshima and Nagasaki. Also included are writings by and about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Leslie Groves, Klaus Fuchs, Henry Stimson, Harry S Truman, Vannevar Bush, Niels Bohr, and many other key figures and authors including Joseph Kanon, Jennet Conant, Kai Bird, and Martin Sherwin. The Manhattan Project is the most comprehensive exploration of the making of the atomic bomb available today.

This work features the classified lectures that galvanized the Manhattan Project scientists - with annotations for the nonspecialist reader and an introduction by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. In March 1943 a group of young scientists, sequestered on a mesa near Santa Fe, attended a crash course in the new atomic physics. The lecturer was Robert Serber, J. Robert Oppenheimer's protege, and they learned that their job was to invent the world's first atomic bomb. Serber's lecture notes, nicknamed the "Los Alamos Primer", were mimeographed and passed from hand to hand, remaining classified for many years. They are published here for the first time, and now contemporary readers can see just how much was known and how terrifyingly much was unknown when the Manhattan Project began. Could this 'gadget', based on the newly discovered principles of nuclear fission, really be designed and built? Could it be small enough and light enough for an airplane to carry? If it could be built, could it be controlled? Working with Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the development of the atomic bomb, Professor Serber has annotated original lecture notes with explanations of the physics terms for the nonspecialist. His preface, an informal memoir, vividly conveys the mingled excitement, uncertainty, and intensity felt by the Manhattan Project scientists. Rhodes' introduction provides a brief history of the development of atomic physics up to the day that Serber stood before his blackboard at Los Alamos. In this edition, "The Los Alamos Primer" finally emerges from the archives to give a new understanding of the very beginning of nuclear weapons. No seminar anywhere has had greater historical consequences.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) engaged an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers: Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, John Dos Passos, to name only a few. The idealism of the cause - defending democracy from fascism at a time when Europe was darkening toward another world war - and the brutality of the conflict drew from them some of their best work: Guernica, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalonia. Paralleling the outpouring of writing and art, the war spurred breakthroughs in military and medical technology. So many different countries participated directly or indirectly in the war that Time magazine called it the 'Little World War'; Spain served in those years as a proving ground for the devastating technologies of World War II, and for the entire 20th century.

More than seventy years ago, American forces exploded the first atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing great physical and human destruction. The young scientists at Los Alamos who developed the bombs, which were nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man, were introduced to the basic principles and goals of the project in March 1943, at a crash course in new weapons technology. The lecturer was physicist Robert Serber, J. Robert Oppenheimer's protege, and the scientists learned that their job was to design and build the world's first atomic bombs. Notes on Serber's lectures were gathered into a mimeographed document titled TheLos Alamos Primer, which was supplied to all incoming scientific staff. The Primer remained classified for decades after the war. Published for the first time in 1992, the Primer offers contemporary readers a better understanding of the origins of nuclear weapons. Serber's preface vividly conveys the mingled excitement, uncertainty, and intensity felt by the Manhattan Project scientists. This edition includes an updated introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes. A seminal publication on a turning point in human history, The Los Alamos Primer reveals just how much was known and how terrifyingly much was unknown midway through the Manhattan Project. No other seminar anywhere has had greater historical consequences.

Part of the SECOND WORLD WAR VOICES series in partnership with the podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk, presented by comedian Al Murray and bestselling historian James Holland. 'Heroic, punishing excursions behind enemy lines, the Chindit expeditions are mythical and controversial in equal measure...Rhodes James takes us right to the heart of them' Al Murray __________________________________ 1943 - The fight to retake Burma is about to begin. Major-General Orde Wingate surprises the conquering Japanese Army with a daring raid they had no idea was coming. But this is just the beginning. Next, he devises a campaign of guerrilla operation to hit the invaders where it most hurts. Behind their own lines. Marshalling and training a lethal force of 10,000 men deep in the Burmese jungle, the Chindits are born. Cipher Officer Richard Rhodes James was part of that hidden army and chronicles the story of a band of brothers fighting for survival against a remorseless enemy and an unforgiving environment. Neither took any prisoners. The Chindits' daring actions and tactical brilliance laid the foundations for turning the tide of the war in the East.

Uniquely fusing practical advice on writing with his own insights into the craft, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes constructs beautiful prose about the issues would-be writers are most afraid to articulate: How do I dare write? Where do I begin? What do I do with this story I have to tell that fills and breaks my heart? Rich with personal vignettes about Rhode's sources of inspiration, How to Write is also a memoir of one of the most original and celebrated writers of our day.

What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and a cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary invention based on the switching of communications signals among different frequencies. Only a writer of Rhodes's caliber could do justice to this remarkable story.

In 1805, Jean Jacques Audubon was a twenty-year-old itinerant Frenchman of ignoble birth and indifferent education who had fled revolutionary violence in Haiti and then France to take refuge in frontier America. Ten years later, John James Audubon was an American citizen, entrepreneur, and family man whose fervent desire to "become acquainted with nature" had led him to reinvent himself as a naturalist and artist whose study of birds would soon earn him international acclaim. The drawings he made during this crucial decade--sold to Audubon's friend and patron Edward Harris to help fund his masterwork "The Birds of America," and now held by the Houghton Library and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University--are published together here for the first time in large format and full color. In these 116 portraits of species collected in America and in Europe we see Audubon inventing his ingenious methods of posing and depicting his subjects, and we trace his development into a scientist and an artist who could proudly sign his artworks "drawn from Nature." The drawings also serve as a record of the birds found in Europe and the Eastern United States in the early nineteenth century, some now rare or extinct.

The drawings are enhanced by an essay on the sources of Audubon's art by his biographer, Richard Rhodes; transcription of Audubon's own annotations to the drawings, including information on when and where the specimens were collected; ornithological commentary by Scott V. Edwards, along with reflections on Audubon as scientist; and an account of the history of the Harris collection by Leslie A. Morris.

Splendid in their own right, these drawings also illuminate theself-invention of one of the most important figures in American natural history. They will delight all those interested in American art, nature, birds, and the life and times of John James Audubon.

In the summer of 1985, a mostly Hawaiian crew set out aboard Hokulea, a reconstruction of an ancient double canoe, to demonstrate what skeptics had steadfastly denied: that their ancestors, sailing in canoes and navigating solely by reading the stars, ocean swells, and other natural signs, could intentionally sail across the Pacific, exploring the vast oceanic realm of Polynesia and discovering and settling all the inhabitable islands there. Their odyssey from Hawaii to Aotearoa (New Zealand) and back, through seven archipelagos and across 12,000 nautical miles, dramatically refuted theorists who had declared that because of the unseaworthiness of their canoes and the inaccuracy of their navigational methods, the Polynesians could only have been pushed accidentally to their islands by the vagaries of wind and current. Voyage of Rediscovery recounts this remarkable journey through the Pacific, describing how the Hawaiian navigator, Nainoa Thompson, guided the canoe over thousands of miles of open ocean without compass, sextant, charts, or any other navigational aids. There are tales of a curiosity attack by sperm whales and of the crew's welcome to Aotearoa by Maori tribesmen who dubbed them their sixth tribe. The experimental approach developed by Ben Finney of reconstructing the ancient voyaging canoes, then testing the canoes and the traditional ways of navigating on long voyages, has transformed our ideas about Polynesian migration. It has also been embraced by Hawaiians and other Polynesians as a way to experience and celebrate their rich ancestral heritage as premier seafarers of the ancient world. By sailing in the wake of their ancestors, the Hawaiians and other Polynesians whocaptained, navigated, and crewed Hokulea made the long journey described in Voyage of Rediscovery a truly cultural as well as scientific odyssey of exploration into their ancestral past.

Title: Flora's Vagaries; a comedy in five acts and in prose. By R. Rhodes].Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.The POETRY & DRAMA collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. The books reflect the complex and changing role of literature in society, ranging from Bardic poetry to Victorian verse. Containing many classic works from important dramatists and poets, this collection has something for every lover of the stage and verse. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Anonymous; Rhodes, Richard; 1670. 4 . 161.c.27.

This is a tale of a life few understand today: the human cost of Empire, where families were torn apart - a father seen once every four years - growing up in the Thirties, a time much talked and written about by those who never knew it; a strange Oxford; the war at its most savage against an enemy like no other. And then communicating to a generation that knew not these things the values we had fought for. It is the story of one who found a faith and who after a life longer than most believed others should know about it. Over these years the East followed the author until he said goodbye to it in a special way. A tale of struggle, but of much fun and a humour that lights up its pages . You will discover after reading this book that these years have been worth recalling.

This is a tale of a life few understand today: the human cost of Empire, where families were torn apart - a father seen once every four years - growing up in the Thirties, a time much talked and written about by those who never knew it; a strange Oxford; the war at its most savage against an enemy like no other. And then communicating to a generation that knew not these things the values we had fought for. It is the story of one who found a faith and who after a life longer than most believed others should know about it. Over these years the East followed the author until he said goodbye to it in a special way. A tale of struggle, but of much fun and a humour that lights up its pages . You will discover after reading this book that these years have been worth recalling.

When he first published "A Hole in the World" in 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes helped launch and legitimate a decade-long publishing phenomenon--the memoir of abused childhood. In this tenth anniversary edition, Rhodes offers new reflections on the abuse he and his older brother endured at the hands of their terrorizing stepmother and negligent father. He also describes readers' powerful and moving responses to his book, considers his changing sentiments as the years have passed, and provides additional details on his brother Stanley, who remains the author's true hero in this moving memoir.

"Unlike too much of what is offered for public edification (and titillation) in this our age of confession, A Hole in the World comes straight from the heart with no apparent self-serving motives. Richard Rhodes is here to tell us three things, all of them important and useful. The first is that it is dangerous and self-deluding to sentimentalize a myth of idyllic American childhood. The second is that a child caught in a hell not of his own making must devise strategies for survival and must cry out for help; there are others, outsiders, ready to provide it. The third-and to those caught in their own torment the most important-is that it is possible to escape, to rise above hurt and rage, to live a life that is useful and good. A timely contribution to the literature of a problem we are only beginning to understand."--Jonathan Yardley, "Washington Post."

"The deepest significance of Rhodes's prose is its spring-fed clarity. He writes: 'My unconscious early prose-it was largely unconscious in those days because I thought the only way I could write was to get drunk first-screens a predicament I struggled desperately to steady at school] and continue to work forty years later to resolve: how to calm and to rescue the lurching monster of overwhelming, intractable, involuntary rage that my mother's suicide, my father's neglect and my stepmother's violence installed in me.' To judge from the simplicity with which he has woven his memories into narrative, and from it constructed his identity, the monster of rage has been laid to rest."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "New York Times."

""A Hole in the World" must be read through tears--the reader's and the writer's--and it must be acknowledged as powerful a bearing of witness, as dark a story of cruelty, as redemptive a proclamation of the soul's strength as we have been given in a very long time. Nothing by the prolific and talented Rhodes prepares us for this shattering testimony."--Frederick Busch, "Los Angeles Times."

This text examines the Mid West of America, covering such diverse topics as coyote hunting, wheat growing and hog butchering and considers individuals such as Truman and Eisenhower.

In Masters of Death, Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’s role in the Holocaust. These “special task forces,” organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar.

These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimated by Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstaking account, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign’s architects as well as its “ordinary” soldiers and policemen, and helps us understand how such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array of documents and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.