About the Book
On the eightieth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Pulitzer Prize finalist whose work is "oral history at its finest" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) delivers an epic narrative of the atomic bomb's creation and deployment, woven from the voices of hundreds of scientists, generals, soldiers, and civilians.
The building of the atomic bomb is the most audacious undertaking in human history: a rush by a small group of scientists and engineers in complete secrecy to unlock the most fundamental power of the universe. Even today, eighty years later, the Manhattan Project evokes boldness, daring, and the grandest of dreams: bringing an end to World War II in the Pacific, a conflict that already had stretched from Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal to Leyte Gulf to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
As Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen fight those battles, men and women strive to discover the atom's secrets at laboratories and plants in places like Chicago, Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos. On August 6, 1945, the world discovers what the end of the war--and the new global age--will look like. Science and politics will never be the same again.
The road to the first atomic bomb ends in Hiroshima, Japan, but it begins in Hitler's Europe, where brilliant physicists following the path that Einstein blazed are forced to flee fascism and antisemitism--bringing to America their determination to harness atomic power before it falls into the Führer's arsenal. The Devil Reached Toward the Sky traces the breakthroughs and the breakneck pace of atomic development in the years leading up to 1945, then takes us inside the B-29 bombers carrying Little Boy and Fat Man and finally to ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, this book is the panoramic narrative of how ordinary people grapple with extraordinary wartime risks, sacrifices, and choices that will transform the course of history.
Theorists and engineers dare to experiment with forces of terrifying power for the purpose of creating an atomic bomb, knowing each passing day costs soldiers' lives--but fearing too the consequences of their creation. Hundreds of thousands of workers toil around the clock to produce uranium and plutonium in an endeavor so classified that most people involved learn the reality of their effort only when it is announced on the radio by President Truman. The 509th Composite Group trains for a mission whose details are kept a mystery until shortly before takeoff, when the Enola Gay and Bockscar are loaded with bombs the crew has never seen. And the civilians of two Japanese cities that have been spared American attacks--preserved for the sake of judging the power of the bomb on an intact city--escape their pulverized homes into a greater hellscape.
Drawing from dozens of oral history archives and hundreds of books, reports, letters, diaries, and transcripts from across the United States, Japan, and Europe, Graff masterfully blends the memories and perspectives from the known and unknown. These include key figures like J. Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves, and President Truman; the crews of the B-29 bombers; and the haunting stories of the Hibakusha--the "bomb-affected people."
Both a testament to human ingenuity and resilience and a compelling drama told by the participants who lived it, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky is a singular, profound, and searing book about the inception of our most powerful weapon and its haunting legacy.
About the Author :
Garrett M. Graff has spent two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. The former editor of POLITICO Magazine and longtime WIRED and CNN contributor, he writes the popular Doomsday Scenario newsletter and hosts the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning podcast Long Shadow. He is the author of ten books, including the #1 national bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky, the FBI history The Threat Matrix, Raven Rock, and the New York Times bestsellers When the Sea Came Alive and Watergate: A New History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Garrett M. Graff has spent two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. The former editor of POLITICO Magazine and longtime WIRED and CNN contributor, he writes the popular Doomsday Scenario newsletter and hosts the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning podcast Long Shadow. He is the author of ten books, including the #1 national bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky, the FBI history The Threat Matrix, Raven Rock, and the New York Times bestsellers When the Sea Came Alive and Watergate: A New History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Garrett M. Graff has spent two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. The former editor of POLITICO Magazine and longtime WIRED and CNN contributor, he writes the popular Doomsday Scenario newsletter and hosts the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning podcast Long Shadow. He is the author of ten books, including the #1 national bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky, the FBI history The Threat Matrix, Raven Rock, and the New York Times bestsellers When the Sea Came Alive and Watergate: A New History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Edoardo Ballerini is a two-time winner of the Audio Publishers Association's Audie Award for best male narrator (2013, Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter; 2019, Watchers, by Dean Koontz) and the only narrator to be profiled by the New York Times, which called him "A master in his field . . . at the forefront of a new kind of celebrity." He is also a regular voice of "Sunday Reads" for The Daily podcast, reaching audiences of two to four million listeners, and of "Sleep Stories" for Calm, the world's #1 meditation app. Articles on Edoardo's work have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian (UK), Aftenposten (Norway), Il Giornale (Italy), RTE (Ireland), the CBC (Canada), the Week, and the Week UK. His narrations have been named among the best ever by Oprah Daily, Elle Magazine, Slate, Audible, Business Insider, Newsday, The A/V Club, and People Magazine, among others. He is also a two-time winner of the SOVAS Voice Arts Award, and was named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine, an honorific granted to only thirty-five actors in the magazine's history. Edoardo has recorded classics by Tolstoy, Dante, Kafka, Whitman, Poe, Calvino, Emerson, Jack London, Dostoyevsky, and Camus, along with The Hebrew Bible in its entirety, as well as bestsellers by Andre Aciman, James Patterson, David Baldacci, and Isabel Allende, and spiritual titles by The Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn. His 135-hour recording of Karl Ove Knausgaard's sweeping My Struggle series garnered international attention. Edoardo Ballerini was a series regular in the critically acclaimed Quarry (Cinemax), and has had recurring roles in The Sopranos (HBO), Boardwalk Empire (HBO), 24 (Fox), Elementary (CBS), and Ripper Street (BBC), among other television credits. He has also appeared in several feature films, most memorably as the star chef in the indie cult classic Dinner Rush, opposite the late Danny Aiello, and most recently in First We Take Brooklyn, opposite Harvey Keitel. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and lives in New York. Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales on 27 October 1914. In 1934 his first book of poetry, Eighteen Poems appeared, followed by Twenty-five Poems in 1936, Deaths and Entrances in 1946 and in 1952 his final volume, Collected Poems. He also published many short stories, wrote filmscripts, broadcast stories and talks, did a series of lecture tours in the United States and wrote Under Milkwood, the radio play.During his fourth lecture tour of the United States in 1953, a few days after his 39th birthday, he collapsed in his New York hotel and died on November 9th at St. Vincent's Hospital. His body was sent back to Laugharne, Wales, where his grave is marked by a simple wooden cross.In June 1994, his wife, Caitlin Thomas, died in Italy, where she had spent most of the years of her life after the death of Dylan Thomas. Her body is buried next to his.
Review :
"A magisterial oral history...A stunning account that brings to the fore the nuclear saga's surreal combination of ingenuity, fate, and terror."
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"Each chapter is a compilation of snippets from interviews, memoirs, and the personal testimony of figures from President Truman and Hiroshima's police chief down to the last survivors of the Hiroshima attack."
-- "Wall Street Journal"
"The power of Graff's oral history is the diversity of voices he relies upon...including voices that have been either little-heard or missed altogether in the eight decades since...No writer could describe better the hellscape that the bombs unleashed better than those on the ground who survived it."
-- "Associated Press"
