Reviews and Comments

After recently reading Hiroshima Nagasaki, I found myself curious about how the hydrogen bomb was developed and tested. Amazon recommended that I read Dark Sun. I started the book in the background (theology and some other reading took priority) several months ago and have been chewing on it ever since. Spoiler, this book is not short! I read almost everything electronically, but if you were to pick up the paperback, it's 700+ pages long.

I've been chewing on it for a while. However, you'll notice that I am writing a review, so the book never ended up in my "abandoned" pile. My continuing curiosity always caused me to pick it back up and read another chapter. The latter chapters do pick up (I kind of got the impression that Rhodes was running out of space). The earlier chapters are really devoted to understanding the science and people essential to the atomic program in the US and USSR.

Rhodes writing style is all over the place. He seems to be unable to resist following a tangent or packing in every bit of his research. The hydrogen bomb isn't really discussed until the final third of the book. Rhodes also clearly has a fascination with the espionage, spending significant time discussing the various Soviet espionage efforts, the FBI investigation of those efforts, and the trials resulting from those investigations. He honestly could have written a completely separate book, as I failed to see how much of this espionage narrative supported the main subject of the book, the design of the hydrogen bomb. 

Also, a large part of this book is trying to understand the deterrence and arms race between the US and the USSR. He brings this all to bear in the Epilogue, showing the futility of the nuclear arms race, which cost the US 4 trillion dollars, and was a large factor in the financial breakdown of the USSR. I found this quote from Solly Zuckerman to be particularly relevant to today's news cycle:

"In light of the certain prospect of retaliation, there has been literally no chance at all that any sane political authority, in either the United States or the Soviet Union, would consciously choose to start a nuclear war. This proposition is true for the past, the present and the foreseeable future.... In the real world of real political leaders . . . a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized in advance as a catastrophic blunder; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history, and a hundred bombs on a hundred cities are unthinkable."

I don't know about you, but the words, "sane political authority" send shivers up my spine. I'm not sure with North Korea, we're dealing with a "sane" leader. He does build a convincing case though, particularly following the Cuban missile crisis, that the arms race and nuclear build-up was not only counter-productive but really in many ways defied any logic. 

Looking at the book as a whole, I would recommend it, particularly for someone who is a history buff. I suggest that perhaps you pretend the title of the book is something like, Dark Sun: A History of the Nuclear Arms Race of the 20th Century. If you pretend thusly, the book would be quite excellent and on target!