Subtitled The Personal, Moral and Political History of the Atomic Scientists, this is an extremely able, engrossing account of the development of nuclear physics and the men who were most significant in the exploitation of the new discoveries. Beginning after 1918 when the three main European centers for research were in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, in Cambridge with Rutherford and in Gottingen with Born, Franck and Hilbert, this reviews scientific advances and political setbacks up to the Teller-Oppenheimer controversy, investigating the spiritual and intellectual problems raised by modern physics and the climate within which the fraternity of scientists debated and finally agreed to reveal the consequence of nuclear fission. A book of eminent importance.