Red mercury rising
I tend to start a lot of books in parallel and then misplace them for a few months before remembering to go back and finish them. Not many books can keep my full attention from cover-to-cover. “Shame” by Sam Cohen is among the rare exceptions where I simply can’t set a book down until completed. Cohen was part of the Manhattan Project and the first proponent of the neutron bomb. His work with and for such luminaries as Oppenheimer, Teller, von Neumann, and the notorious Jess Marcum gave him a front-row seat to military science and policy in the 20th century. While the view of the theater was good the script was almost tragic; his dealings with the US Congress, black comedy.
What if nuclear weapons development and military policy was in the hands of naive and unqualified men? What if RAND didn’t give good advice? What if the scientists bickered and argued like teenagers? What if the math behind nuclear weapons was half wrong? What if leading Congressional officials didn’t know what a neutron was? And what if all your allies go into early retirement at the hands of politicians?
