1998-11-01 Technical/Scientific history of the work at Los Alamos

schedules and the accomplishments made in those years of hard -and we are told in details how and why it was hard- work!

If you have worked at a National Lab (and even if you haven't) you'll understand how the concept of the national laboratory came about by understanding the work in the early days of Los Alamos involving a fine interplay between the scientific, the engineering and the programmatic thrusts.

Recommending this book seems like an understatement. If you are a physicist, a chemist, a mathematician, a computer scientist you want to read this book and understand how they did it!

The only thing that could be improved in this book is possibly including a few diagrams. I am not sure whether that is because they might still be classified, but they must exist the archives at Los Alamos. And adding a diagram here and there would certainly be helpful to the reader. If there had to be a revised edition, that's where improvement could find a home.

I'd challenge the team that wrote this book to tackle other successes such as the history of Fermilab or SLAC for example. And not to shy away from a tougher one -not a success story- the history of the failed SSC project. Use some of that insight and record in a similar manner how science, engineering and a really fine mission (not equaled in the latter half of this century) sadly failed that time around...