Popular Science Review - The Manhattan Project

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Review - The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atom Bomb - Jeff Hughes

The distinctly misleading title isn't a good start. Although the book features the Manhattan Project as, perhaps, when "big science" (in the sense of big budget, industrialised science) grew up, it certainly isn't the main theme of the book which is the larger scope of big science itself.

It teeters between two and three stars - occasionally it is interesting, but the fact remains that it feels more like a history of science text book than a true, readable popular science book. Perhaps most damning are the particularly badly reproduced illustrations - often looking like a bad photocopy of something torn out of a magazine.

The topic, nonetheless, is an interesting one - how science has gone from something that could be done on a tabletop to an enterprise requiring an industrial complex, whether we are talking huge particle colliders, or the mass effort required to sequence a genome.

Hughes explores well how this approach to science requires a different spirit - perhaps a lesser one that "traditional science". Certainly a less interesting one for many of the individual scientists.

It's just a shame it hasn't a bit more life.

Also in hardback (US is hardback):

Reviewed by Martin O'Brien

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