Plutonium

Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element, By Jeremy Bernstein

This is a bibliography of Bernstein work; he has been active in NY Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/authors/110
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/bernstein.html



Publishers Weekly - as quoted on Amazon

Physicist and former New Yorker staff writer Bernstein presents a scientifically rigorous (equations and all) but clearly written explanation of the recondite reasons why plutonium is supremely suited for bomb-making material—and little else. From the discovery of uranium in 1789 to the Manhattan Project, Nazi attempts at a nuclear bomb and the post-WWII efforts of the U.S.S.R. to become a nuclear power, Bernstein reviews the element's storied past. Although the discovery of the atom's structure has been covered before, Bernstein spins an accessible, insightful description of how the great scientists Curie, Bohr, Rutherford and Fermi, among others, deconstructed the atom through a combination of individual brilliance, a spirit of collaboration and serendipity. He also brings his acquaintance with several Los Alamos scientists (he interned at the laboratory in 1957) to the less canonical subject of the scientific and engineering problems inherent to building a working nuclear bomb.

http://www.amazon.com/Plutonium-History-Worlds-Dangerous-Element/dp/0309102960/ref=pd_sim_b_2/103-9830571-0401420