Autobiography of the Bomb
A Novel by Jim Shankman

The received story of the building of the atomic bomb is a well-known narrative of triumphant scientific advancement. But there is another story about the moral and psychological complexities that confounded the (mostly) Jewish scientists who built the bomb and the heavy price they paid for their exhausting labor in a confused political environment, a story steeped in the mythological and religious symbolism of their Jewish culture. It is the personal story of the men who built the bomb, their passions, the clashes of their immense personalities, their naivete, their sense of power, their arrogance, their ambition and their despair, the messy, chaotic understory of scientific achievement, which was in fact a runaway train of human calamity.