Richard Rhodes – författare

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEThe Making of the Atomic Bomb is 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.

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.

Technology has been the blessing and the bane of the 20th Century. Human life-span has nearly doubled in the West, but no century ever killed more human beings with new technologies than this. New technology became part of the machine of war, ranging from the staggering loss of life of the First World War to the media spectacle which brought the war in the Gulf into our living rooms. Improvements in agriculture have fed increasing billions, but now pesticides and chemicals threaten to poison the Earth. Richard Rhodes attempts to answer some fundamental questions arising from the prominence which technology plays in all of our lives. These problems and paradoxes have stirred impassioned debate, yet despite the central role technology has played in this century, VISIONS OF TECHNOLOGY is the first book to represent the rich diversity of commentary about this vital subject. This provocative treasury hightlights the views of the century's most prominent technological figures from Henry Ford, H.G. Wells, Rachel Carson and Albert Einstein to Aldous Huxley and John Glenn. As the cultural ambivalence towards technology takes us into the next century, Richard Rhodes provides a timely forum of debate about machines, systems and the human world.

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.

When he first published this text, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes helped to launch and legitimate the memoir of abused childhood. In this tenth anniversary edition, he offers new reflections on the abuse he and his elder brother suffered at the hands of their stepmother and father.

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.

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.

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 this perceptive and illustrative look at the expressive and practical use of stone throughout history, Richard Rhodes unlocks the underlying principles of this ancient material—and explains the closely guarded “Sacred Rules” of the Freemasons guild for the first time ever.The relationship between mankind and stone is elemental and deeply ingrained in us all. Stone, after all, has been the primary building material for more than five thousand years of human history, and it continues to record our triumphs and failures. In this searching history, Rhodes—a sculptor, stonemason, and scholar of stonework—explores how stone is best used today and throughout history.Stone presents the closely kept “Sacred Rules” developed over centuries by the medieval Freemason guild, previously available only to the initiated. Here, the rules are explained through historical examples and photographs. In these times of rapid development and expansive urbanization, Rhodes implores us to explore the essential qualities of stone that emerge from the Sacred Rules, not only to rediscover the ancient and traditional knowledge that governed its use for so long but also to find a roadmap for how future generations might thoughtfully recapture the power this material offers.