TRINITY

Chronicling the first atomic blast.

The great mushroom cloud of an atomic or hydrogen bomb detonation has been called “a thing of terrible beauty.” Indeed, at its most dramatic, Seyl’s illustrated history of the inaugural atomic bomb test, and beyond, possesses a hypnotic, terrifying majesty. The experience of reading this book is both admiring and unsettling. The Manhattan Project, which produced the world’s first atomic bomb and hastened the end of World War II, was not without its doubters. Those, like project leaders J. Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie R. Groves, whose absolute commitment to the success of the first test, codenamed “Trinity,” was, in the aftermath, matched by their disquiet at what it portended. Seyl, a science writer and editor at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s National Security Research Center, headed an editorial and photographic team that lends context to these never-before-seen photographs. Some, only recently declassified, provide a close-up, on-the-ground sense of the unique challenges faced, the exhaustive preparations for a highly complex and novel procedure, and the testing in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto (“Journey of the Dead Man”) region, with scientists and military personnel working in the relentless heat of the desert sun. The dual detonations over Japan in 1945 famously inspired Oppenheimer to quote, ruefully, an ancient Hindu text: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Although the firsthand accounts are compelling, some of the details about the photography itself and images of the many cameras and measuring instruments employed to capture the first detonation may be of more interest to professionals than to the general reader. But these are quibbles.

A singular event captured in ordinary—and extraordinary—images.