Despite the title, the Making of the Atomic Bomb is less about the Manhattan Project than the lengthy evolution of the science that made the bomb possible, beginning decades prior to the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rhodes tells that tale through the life and times of the dozens of remarkable physicists and chemists who collaboratively and progressively moved the ball forward using ingenious tools they devised along the way. Today, these instruments seem astonishingly primitive and crude - using materials like blocks of paraffin and thin pieces of aluminum foil to filter strange emanations to discover hitherto unknown subatomic particles. Nobel prizes rested on observations as seemingly random as the differences between test results obtained when an instrument was placed on a marble rather than a wooden tabletop.Rhodes is more than usually gifted for a writer of non-fiction. His prose flows quickly and easily, often ending with an elegant flourish that ties together wonderfully what has come before. He also extensively relies on, and generously quotes from, letters, diaries and interviews that bring alive the individuals who made the discoveries, many of whom were Jewish and retreated across Europe to Britain and the United States in the course of their work. He also provides a running narrative of the deteriorating political situation in Europe, the rise of Hitler, the outbreak of war, and the hideous impact of traditional weaponry in the course of that conflict. More may have died in Hiroshima than in other cities after radiation was taken into effect, but as many or more died directly from the fire bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, where many tens of thousands in each case died hideously from incendiary carpet bombing, sometimes from waves of over 1,000 aircraft, leading to horrific firestorms that destroyed buildings and human beings almost as completely as the atomic bombs that were later deployed.Those interested only in the Manhattan Project may want to start the book two thirds of the way through. Others may find themselves skipping through places where Rhodes takes a deeper dive, as he often does, on some historical, scientific or personal aspect of the tale as he has chosen to tell it. But if you have the time, read it cover to cover. Rhodes is an elegant and sensitive writer and the road from Madame Curie’s discoveries to Oppenheimer’s Trinity test is perhaps the greatest scientific saga of our time, wrapping in as it does uncommon brilliance, societal upheaval, elements of Greek tragedy, and the long following shadow of the Cold War. To his credit, after glorifying the work of scores of scientists, Rhodes ends the book by describing in horrifying detail what those on the ground were subjected to in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.I read the book on Kindle, and see that other reviewers have noted - and regretted - the deletion of an earlier epilogue. I'm sorry to have been deprived of the ability to read that and will have to find an older printed copy to get the full benefit of Rhodes' understanding of his subject.