From the very start, at the age of twenty-one, Herbert F. York was swept into the century's most daring and dangerous technical achievement, the making of the atomic bomb. Throughout his fifty-year career as scientist and statesman, York has been there - at the center of this formidable and fractious era. His is not a dispassionate scholar's treatise, nor is it a reporter's story clipped from the files. Instead, this is a charged, eye-witness documentary, told in the first person by a principal actor. York takes us backstage to witness key events of our time: to the Manhattan Project for the birth of the atomic bomb; to Lawrence Livermore where the H-bomb was built; to Washington to eavesdrop on how post-war history was being forged; and to Geneva where he tried to stem the madness. Along the way, you'll meet some of our greatest heros and villains - Lawrence, Oppenheimer, Weisskopf, Teller, General Groves, President Eisenhower, and a cast of hundreds - friends, colleagues, enemies, who for more than half a century, held the fate of the world in their hands.

First published in 1976, The Advisors is an absorbing look at the technical, strategic, and human aspects of the great debate that led to the decision to build the first hydrogen bomb. Based on the author's own participation in Project Superbomb, on interviews with other participants, and on declassified documents, this book explains the complete background to this major acceleration of the nuclear arms race. For the reissue, the author has written a new preface and epilogue. The reissue also includes a recently declassified essay by Hans A. Beths discussing the history of the H-bomb project from his unique vantage point as Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Aloamos. He has revised the essay specifically for inclusion in this book.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.