Richard Rhodes

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

Describes the lesser-known technological talents of actress Hedy Lamarr and the collaborative work with avant-garde composer George Antheil that eventually led to the development of spread-spectrum radio, cell phones, and GPS systems.

In Masters of Death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’s role in the Holocaust. These “special task forces,” organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often...

From the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb: the story of the entire postwar superpower arms race, climaxing during the Reagan-Gorbachev decade when the United States and the Soviet Union came within scant hours of nuclear war–and then nearly agreed to abolish nuclear weapons.
In a narrative that moves like a thriller, Rhodes sheds light on the Reagan administration’s unprecedented arms...

"Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author Richard Rhodes relates the remarkable story of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of the reporters, writers, artists, doctors, and nurses who witnessed it. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) inspired and haunted an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and John Dos Passos. The idealism of the cause--defending...

This culminating volume in Richard Rhodes's monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post-Cold War age from the second war in Iraq to the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism, from the changing roles of the five original nuclear powers to our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia. Finally, Rhodes imagines what a post-nuclear world might look like,...