The Atlantic

In August 1945, a few days after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the government released an official report on the history of the destructive weapon. “The work on the atomic bomb,” it explained, was undertaken in Los Alamos, where “an extraordinary galaxy of scientific stars gathered on this New Mexican mesa.” Despite its dull prose, the Smyth report, as it came to be known, would make The New York Times’ bestseller list and be translated into more than three-dozen languages. “J. R. Oppenheimer has been director of the [Los Alamos] laboratory from the start,” it explained. Read More >>