Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, 266 pages

I’m not much of a nonfiction reader. Bomb, however, is enough to make me rethink that claim. I was hooked from the minute I started reading it. Bomb achieved what most of my high school and college history courses never did - it presented history in a way that engaged me, it never left me feeling lost because of gaps in my prior knowledge, and it left me wanting to learn more. Although we have Bomb in the adult non-fiction section at SLPL, it won a boatload of kid’s and teen lit awards in 2013, including a Newbery Honor, the Sibert Medal and a YALSA Award for excellence in nonfiction.

Bomb is more than just a historical account of the Manhattan Project. Sheinkin weaves in additional plots that really make for an exciting read: Norwegian commandos, Soviet spies, mega-genius physicists, a three-way arms race and more! However, what really drew me in was the Manhattan Project itself. For scientists to make the leap from learning that atoms could be split, to creating the world’s most dangerous weapon in such a short period of time is mindboggling. It certainly helps that the characters involved in the Manhattan Project were such interesting and charismatic people, I’ve added several Oppenheimer biographies to my to-read list in the wake of reading Bomb.

One of the things that really impressed me about Sheinkin’s storytelling ability is that he could successfully create so much suspense around a story to which I knew the outcome. I knew from page one that the physicists would succeed in creating an atomic bomb, that the bombs would be dropped on Japan, and that the Soviets would eventually figure out how to make their own atomic bomb, but I was still absolutely on the edge of my seat the entire time (honestly, just typing all that makes me feel like I should precede the sentence with a spoiler alert warning). While this book probably won’t impress the hard-core history buffs out there, I highly recommend it for history-light-weights like myself and teen readers.