The Devil Reached Toward the Sky by Garrett M. Graff

The Devil Reached Toward the Sky by Garrett M. Graff is an excellent book subtitled An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. Graff covers in detail the events around the bomb, it's origins, building, dropping of it twice on Japan, and effects of that. It was developed for use against Germany, and the intensity of work was to get the bomb developed before Hitler could. Germany never came close to developing the bomb, in part due to antisemitism casting out of scientists, some of whom fled Europe and then were involved in the effort. Germany had dropped out of the war by the time of the bombings, which were done to save the lives of American soldiers who otherwise might have died in a ground invasion of Japan. 

The Manhattan Project to create the bomb was a science and math achievement, but also just as much an industrial manufacturing achievement, one conducted in secret. At the University of Chicago they showed the bomb could be possible, creating a chain-reacting pile of uranium. Hanford, WA was the site of the plutonium refinement plant, Oak Ridge, TN of uranium refinement, and Los Alamos, NM where the bomb was built. 75,000 people were working in and around Oak Ridge by the end of the war, over 8,000 at Los Alamos, and 45,000 at Hanford. 

The project director was General Leslie Groves and in charge of building the bomb was J. Robert Oppenheimer. Other drivers of the project were Vannevar Bush, head of the science effort, James B. Conant, president of Harvard, Enrico Fermi, a physicist who was deputy to Groves, Richard Feynman, Otto Frisch, and Edward Teller. Noted was how important "energy = mass X the speed of light," squared by Albert Einstein is. Graff covers Feynman highlighting the "atomic hypothesis, that all things are made of atoms, little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another."

The bomber wing was the 509th Composite Group, one, including transport supply aircraft, designed to fly a single weapon. They trained at Wendover Field at the Utah, Nevada state line. The bombs were dropped by B-29s, and airmen at first were reluctant to fly the B-29 as they were worried about its safety. To convince the men to fly the B-29, women, who weren't allowed to fly in combat, were recruited to fly it, and then when men saw this, they went ahead. After the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, Harry S. Truman became President and was told about the bomb, with the full description provided by Vannevar Bush. Germany surrendered May 8, and the Trinity test of the bomb was July 16 in a remote corner of the New Mexico desert. 

The first bomb was transported on the U.S.S. Indianapolis to Tinian, 40 square miles and 1,500 miles from Japan. The Enola Gay, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets, was the plane that dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945, with Nagasaki three days later. The mission over Hiroshima was a textbook effort, that which dropped on Nagasaki was riddled with problems, including a switch from Kokura to Nagasaki as the target due to cloud cover and barely landing on Okinawa, the closest American base, while little fuel after dropping the bomb. 

In Hiroshima, 70,000 of the city's 76,000 homes were destroyed. Casualty reports had 66,000 dying in the initial blast and another 140,000 by the end of the year, roughly half the city's residents. Japan initiated surrender negotiations the day after Nagasaki, and then surrendered August 15, 1945. As people in the days and weeks and months after would suffer from radiation poisoning, the U.S. government denied that there were any lasting effects of the atomic explosions. In early 1946, New Yorker correspondent John Hershey traveled to Hiroshima, and then the August 31, 1946 issue of the magazine devoted the entire issue, 30,000 words, to covering what happened in the city. The book closes with the Albert Einstein quote "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth... rocks."

Who is Government? by Michael Lewis

Who is Government? by Michael Lewis is a solid compilation book subtitled The Untold Story of Public Service. It came out of a series of essays done for The Washington Post, and features ten profiles of government employees by nine different writers, with Lewis providing the first and last essay.

“The Canary” by Lewis is about Christopher Mark, a former coal miner who led the development of industry-wide standards to prevent roof falls in mines. His work, accounting for all conditions in a given mine, led to 2016 being the first year of no U.S. mining roof fall fatalities. It’s a fascinating view into someone who studied mining engineering at Penn State and wound up working for the Bureau of Mines. 

“The Sentinel” by Casey Cep covers Ronald E. Walters of the National Cemetery Association. It details what’s done on behalf of military veterans after they pass away, and how each is entitled to a military funeral, regardless of where or how they died. Walters is in charge of this effort, including maintaining cemeteries around the world and online records of veterans who have died. It’s a wonderful story about the pursuit of excellence for an important cause. 

“The Searchers” by Dave Eggers is about employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory looking for the extraterrestrial life that they’re confident is out there. They’re searching for exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, that can support life, either intelligent life or even just bacteria. One of those profiled is Nick Siegler, the chief technologist for NASA’s exoplanet program. He was a chemical engineer, working in industry, and then at 32 applied and was accepted to Harvard’s Special Students program, and then 43 when he completed his PhD and started at NASA. 

“The Number” by John Lanchester details the consumer price index produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and includes mention of the misery index, the unemployment rate plus inflation. It’s noted how a high misery index almost always correlates with the political party holding the White House losing it. The exception to this was the 2024 election, where the misery index was low, but food inflation was talked about in the news to the point where people felt it a huge problem. 

“The Equalizer” by Sarah Vowell profiles Pamela Wright of the National Archives and Records Administration, and her efforts as the NARA Chief Innovation Officer to make records available for people, particularly online. Reference is made to History Hub on the NARA website, where people can submit a query and it will be answered by NARA archivists, federal staffers, and citizen volunteers, a Google search done by people. Also noted is how census records are made public 72 years after the fact, to protect privacy, and the information that people can gather on their ancestors. Mentioned as well is the staff of the National Archives are responsible for physically protecting the actual Constitution.

“The Free-Living Bureaucrat” by Michael Lewis covers Heather Stone of the Food and Drug Administration. There’s a fascinating story within about rare diseases, and how those who contract them are underserved because the disease too rare to warrant pharmaceutical company focus. Lewis writes about Walter and Amanda Smith, and their daughter Alaina. At the age of five she had a medical emergency where she seemed to suffer a seizure. Doctors diagnosed her with epilepsy, but then after her family demanded an MRI, an infection was found in her brain, one caused by her having Balamuthia, an amoeba that can enter the brain through dust and consume it. When they received this information, fewer than 200 cases had been reported worldwide, and 95% of the people infected had died from it. Heather was working in the FDA and developed and was trying to promote use of a tool to catalog treatments of rare diseases. CURE ID was designed not to be about methods that had gone through the approved for public use process, but anecdotal information that could help people learn from what others in their situation did. There’s some half a dozen cases a year of Balamuthia reported in the U.S. and the treatment that the Smiths had available for their daughter was a poor blend of cocktails, ones that just made her sick. Amanda heard about a drug out of China that might be effective at treating Balamuthia and created a LinkedIn account through which she found Heather Stone's name and called her. Stone knew of a supply of pills in California and arranged for them to ship to Dallas where Amanda's daughter was. Also, Stone obtained a letter from the FDA’s review division saying that the receiving hospital could provide the pills, extending Alaina's life.