Is this a wistful or foolish notion? Truthfully, it is not in the nature of the US to dictate to the world. Yet, is the United States to be praised for the restraint exercised in the use of the bomb? Had any other nation held this power in its hands would the world be remotely the same today? Although in "Brotherhood of the Bomb", Gregg Herken, does not address this matter directly, he does spawn these and a thousand other philosophic questions about the ethics behind nuclear weapons.

Mr. Herken ably traces the development of nuclear weapons through the professional lives of three of the most prominent Scientists of the Nuclear Age, Oppenheimer, Lawrence and Teller. This is a fast paced, intense and dramatic story of how physicists did their part to help win the Great War against Nazism, Fascism and aggression. Yet it is also about men with divided loyalties. Robert Oppenheimer had dabbled on the fringes of left-wing politics in the late 1930s. His liberal beliefs and attitudes carried over into his work and into the politics of the Bomb subsequent to its use against Japan. Oppenheimer was head of war time Los Alamos, the laboratory where the first nuclear bombs were developed. He was fairly lax about security, allowing people who had dubious pasts access to high level secrets. The evidence and consequences of Dr. Oppenheimer's attitude is detailed throughout the book. Even so, there is no evidence that Oppenheimer specifically intended that the secrets of the Nuclear bomb should be leaked directly to the Soviet Union. Indeed, it seems far more likely that his liberal attitude regarding security stemmed from his upbringing in the scientific community where fame and fortune rested on making discoveries and publishing them in scientific papers to the world. Suddenly, scientists who craved the glories of Einstein and Curie were told that their discoveries had to lay hidden from the world for security reasons. Of course, the military handled security and worked hard to rein the scientists in, even as the scientists exchanged information to facilitates new discoveries. As it was the FBI and other agencies watched those who worked at Los Alamos closely, and it is due to their voluminous files (over 1 foot thick on Oppenheimer alone) that we are treated to the surreptitious goings on of that time. Gregg Herken's book is the beneficiary of the transcripts of secret wire taps, photos and even KGB files from the Soviet Union. During the 1940s and 1950s there was a definite attempt by the Soviets to steal the secret of the American A-Bomb (and later the H-Bomb). The fact that just three years after World War II they detonated their own device (and it was an exact replica of the U.S. weapon) shows how successful they were. Although the FBI and CIA worked assiduously to stop the leaks they were looking in the wrong places. While they were pointing fingers at Robert Oppenheimer, his brother Frank, as well as a host of other scientists, the secrets were flowing out in the front seat of the car of Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was an English scientist sent to work at Los Alamos. "Brotherhood of the Bomb" moves beyond the development of the Atom Bomb and moves into the politics and personality clashes inherent in the development of an even bigger weapon, variously known as "The Super", "The Hydride Bomb", or as we now call it, "The Hydrogen Bomb". It is at this point that the interests of the three major protagonists of the story begin to clash. Ernest Lawrence, the empire building physicist at Berkeley, Edward Teller the ex-patriot Hungarian who had been persecuted by the Communists and the ever present Oppenheimer who wanted to suppress any more advancements in weaponry for the sake of humanity. Mr. Herken does an amazing job of writing about an issue highly charged with political intrigue. As a reviewer, I am always aware of tiny statements that give away the author's political or philosophic view point. "Brotherhood of the Bomb" presents an exciting history, graphically, thoughtfully, even analytically without ever revealing the author's bias. This is a fascinating story about great men in a heroic time, struggling directly with the greatest questions of their age, nuclear power - how to use it and when to use it. ****

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