Books

[wlrun3@aol.com]

 

    ...Best Nuclear Books, in order of merit...


    1) The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1986, Richard Rhodes

    2) Nuclear Inc., 1983, Mark Hertsgaard

    3) The Nuclear Barons, 1981, Peter Pringle

    4) Building the Bombs, 2002, Charles Loeber

    5) Obsessive Genius, 2005, Barbara Goldsmith

    6) The Curve of the Binding Energy, 1973, John McPhee

    7) Making a Real Killing, 1999, Len Ackland

    Three Mile Island, 2004, Samuel Walker

    9) Edward Teller, Doctor Strangelove, 2004, Peter Goodchild

   10) Enrico Fermi, Physicist, 1970, Emilio Segre'

   11) J. Robert Oppenheimer, 2005, David Cassidy

   12) Dark Sun, 1995, Richard Rhodes

   13) The Angry Genie, 1999, Karl Morgan

   14) The Uranium People, 1979, Leona Marshall Libby

   15) Arsenals of Folly, 2007, Richard Rhodes

   16) A Case for Nuclear Generated Electricity, 2004, Heaberlin
                                                                                             
   17) The Radioactive Boy Scout, 2004, Ken Silverstein

   18) Conservation Fallout, 2006, John Wills

   19) Rickover, 2007, Thomas Allen

   20) Permissible Dose, 2000,  Samuel Walker












   

[IRLFAN]

    21.  The Rickover Effect - Theodore Rockwell

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...God and Gold, 2007, Russel Walter Mead...

   ..."a world in which the Anglo-Saxons raced ahead, defeated all challengers, and established a maritime hegemony based on globlal capitalism."

   Mead explains how the Anglo-American ascendency, based on the Dutch economic model and idealism, both secular and religious and tempered by compromise, provides the framework for a surprisingly optimistic future.

   "There is no resting place, no final destination for this process, and the real goal of Anglo-American civilization is to get the permanent revolution well and truly under way. We are launching a space ship, not building a rest home.
   We do not yet know what humanity is capable of, what intellectual, spiritual, technological, and cultural limits-if any-there are on humanity's abilities and societies."

   ...many that frequent this forum probably would have felt, as I did in reading this book, a curious sense of pride...

    ..."The nations, not so blest as thee,
        Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall:
        While thou shalt flourish great and free,
        The dread and envy of them all."
                                         James Thomson




       

[Fermi2]

    21.  The Rickover Effect - Theodore Rockwell

This book is mere Cheerleading.

wlrun3 what about The Making Of The Sun by Richard Rhodes which describes the US efforts to make the Hydrogen Bomb? It's a great read.

Mike

[wlrun3@aol.com]

This book is mere Cheerleading.

wlrun3 what about The Making Of The Sun by Richard Rhodes which describes the US efforts to make the Hydrogen Bomb? It's a great read.

Mike

   Mike,

      I'm really enjoying this discussion. Thankyou.

   ...Dark Sun, 1995, Richard Rhodes...

   ...along with his recent book...Arsenals of Folly, 2007...and his Pulitzer Prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1986...he has molded a trilogy beginning with;

   ..."Tuesday, September 12, 1933...The stoplight changed to green. Leo Szilard stepped off the curb and as he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woe, the shape of things to come."

   ...to;

   ..."Igor Khurchatov walked in to ground zero after the test and was horrified to see the earth cratered even though the bomb had detonated above ten thousand feet. "That was a monstrous sight...that weapon must not be allowed ever to be used.""

   ...to;

   ..."Far from victory in the Cold War, the superpower nuclear-arms race and the corresponding militarization of the American economy gave us ramshackle cities, broken bridges, failing schools, entrenched poverty, impeded life expectancy, and a menacing and secretive national-security state that held the entire human world hostage."

   ...this is the definitive story of how humans created a device unique to their history...one capable of easily destroying them all...

[Fermi2]

I liked in the second Rhodes book how he described when they were testing an H Bomb and it had something like 8 times the expected yield so it wiped out an entire island and they had to estimate the yield by how much of the island was missing.

Also the US and British Bomber overflights of Soviet territory where they dropped the pamphlets that more or less said if this were a nuclear weapon you'd be dead.

Mike

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...the book that really cleared up all the questions I had left after bldg 771 at Rocky Flats and a month in the desert next to the 1962 110 kiloton 600 foot deep Sedan crater at Nevada Test Site was...

   ... Building the Bombs, 2002, Charles Loeber...

   

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...To Rule the Waves, How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, 2004, Arthur Herman...

    ..."The job of the historian is not just to recount or explain the past but to show how things have come to be what they are."

   ...Hawkins and Drake thru Nelson to the Falklands...



   

[Fermi2]

To Rule The Waves was a great book, but inaccurate in a few spots.

If you want a couple books that are far better researched then get Dreadnought and Castles Of Steel by Richard K Massie. In the same light get The Rules Of The Game by Andrew Gordon which dissects British Performance at the Battle Of Jutland. In fact it's my belief that all managers should read this book. It's fascinating.

Mike

[wlrun3@aol.com]

To Rule The Waves was a great book, but inaccurate in a few spots.

If you want a couple books that are far better researched then get Dreadnought and Castles Of Steel by Richard K Massie. In the same light get The Rules Of The Game by Andrew Gordon which dissects British Performance at the Battle Of Jutland. In fact it's my belief that all managers should read this book. It's fascinating.

Mike

    ...thankyou...where were the inaccuracies...

    ...have read and was very impressed with Dreadnought, one of the best books i've ever read...

   ...Massie's Peter the Great, is also high on my list...

   ...i decided immediately on reading your post to read the Gordon book...your having mentioned him in the company of Herman and Massie, i am surprised that i missed it...

   ...can you offer others of the same type...

[shovelheadred]

..."The Plutonium Files; America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War"...Eileen  Welsome.

..This book tells about the tests the US Gov't did on civilians with plutonium. Injecting pregnant women with plutonium, during exam visits in Oak Ridge,Tenn,,,Giving Plutonium to children in there cereal at an orphanage in Rochester,NY..and paying convicted criminals in a Washington State penitentiary to eat plutonium.....this was when plutonium was first discovered and the effects on humans was not known...

,,,Savannah River Site was used as an environmental research site to test effects of plutonium on the environment.....

...The Energy Secretary in the 70's..found these files and paid the family's of the affected individual .....not all tested personell got sick, it had no affect on some, some died, some unborn infants had defects....some had health problems that were reversed..

This book also has information about the bomb test in the Atoll's, on the pilots and crews...and ground tests in Nevada..



..very good reading....Red

[wlrun3@aol.com]

..."The Plutonium Files; America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War"...Eileen  Welsome.

..This book tells about the tests the US Gov't did on civilians with plutonium. Injecting pregnant women with plutonium, during exam visits in Oak Ridge,Tenn,,,Giving Plutonium to children in there cereal at an orphanage in Rochester,NY..and paying convicted criminals in a Washington State penitentiary to eat plutonium.....this was when plutonium was first discovered and the effects on humans was not known...

,,,Savannah River Site was used as an environmental research site to test effects of plutonium on the environment.....

...The Energy Secretary in the 70's..found these files and paid the family's of the affected individual .....not all tested personell got sick, it had no affect on some, some died, some unborn infants had defects....some had health problems that were reversed..

This book also has information about the bomb test in the Atoll's, on the pilots and crews...and ground tests in Nevada..



..very good reading....Red

   ...i think you and i read this about the same time and at the same place...1999, bldg 779, rocky flats...

   ...i went on to bldg 771 where i read "Making a Real Killing, Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West", 1999, Len Ackland...

   ...congratulations on your current job, you did great...

   ...all the best, see you down the road...

 

[Fermi2]

Sure,

If you want a truly excellent history get The History Of United States Naval Operations in World War 2 by Samuel Eliot Morison. It's a 15 Volume Set and covers everything the USN did in WW2. The key here is Morison was a Harvard Professor who convinced FDR the best history would be written by someone who had actually been there. FDR had Morison commissioned and the result might be the best history of WW2 US Naval Operations ever written. Keep in mind Morison did not have data later made available but he was given the resources of the entire USN to write an accurate real time history. He's a bit jingoistic but he wrote a very good series of books. Each book describes a campaign or series of related campaigns. If you can't get the entire series or don't want to pay for 15 volumes then get The Two Ocean War which is the condensed version, it's about 800 pages and is very good. My wife got me the entire 15 volume set on Amazon for 149 dollars, no shipping. If you liked Massie you'll like Morison as he's very readable. By the way since you read Dreadnought you should read Castles Of Steel.

Next try The Price Of Disobedience and Vanguard To Trident by Eric Grove. The former is about the chase of the Admiral Graf Spee a German cruiser which the Brits cornered in WW2. Best history about this event that I've ever read. The later is about the state of the Brit Navy post WW2 and the decisions that economics forced on the British Defense Ministry. Grove by the way might be one of the best historians of modern times.

Mike

[wlrun3@aol.com]

 

   ...mike, thankyou for eric grove...

   ...read morison's two volume...

   ...finishing "how the scots invented the modern world" by arthur herman since i was so impressed with his "to rule the waves", even with the inaccuracies...   

   ...niall ferguson...harvard/oxford history professor...

       ..."colossus: the price of america's empire"...

       ..."empire: rise and demise of the british world order"...

       ...started his "war of the world" but was overwhelmed...

       ...highly recommend his recent "the ascent of money"...

       ...book tv interview four times this weekend for the release of this extraordinary book...

[RADBASTARD]

The Day of Infamy by newt gingrage its,s a what if book about if the japs launched a 3rd wave and if out carriers were out looking for their task force.

Just about any ww2 book is cool

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...Sunday...Nov 23...6 pm...Book TV (c-span)..."The Ascent of Money", Oct 2008, Niall Ferguson...

   ...my intention in posting this is too initiate a forum discussion on the current global economic crisis...



   

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...i have noticed...

   ...if questions of merit are asked on the forum, sometimes, from within the cloud of clutter, emerges answers of extreme value...

   ...this suggests that, watching, are some of the most brilliant and insightful minds of our industry...

   ...for me, a humbling realization...

   ...nukeworker is indeed a powerful tool...

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...sunday, december 14...c-span 2...book tv...

   ...6:00 PM 59 min After Words: Brian Michael Jenkins, author of "Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?" interviewed by P.J. Crowley...

[wlrun3@aol.com]

   ...final paragraph of "The Ascent of Money", Niall Ferguson, 2008...

   ..."financial markets are like the mirror of mankind, revealing every hour of every working day the way we value ourselves and the resources of the world around us."

[vikingfan]

you might also try " NASA's nuclear frontier"  the plum brook reactor facility in Sandusky, Ohio written by Mark D. Bowles and Robert S. Arrighi and there is also a video called " of ashes of atoms" which details the experimental research reactor in sandusky, ohio.

[alphadude]

I want to clean out my nuclear library. If someone will pay postage I will send it to them. There are several rad health hand books, pink and the older book, MOE, Knoll Detection, Nuke Eng. and lots more. Postage would be about $25.00. Most of these books are out of print and considered hard to get.

[wlrun3@aol.com]

I want to clean out my nuclear library. If someone will pay postage I will send it to them. There are several rad health hand books, pink and the older book, MOE, Knoll Detection, Nuke Eng. and lots more. Postage would be about $25.00. Most of these books are out of print and considered hard to get.

   ...yes, please...will pay you fair price plus postage ...i am emailing you now...

[alphadude]

thanks for all the replies. I will get them all together and see what I have in total. Maybe I can divide them so everybody gets happy. I did have some older Nuke eng. books too. So give me a day or so to pile them up and I will post what I have and we will go from there. Also, I have some safety books also if you are interested. I am a CSP so I have a lot of related material also.
ced

[Fermi2]

How many Nuke eng books?

[alphadude]

here is what I have found so far. some more may turn up but i have these piled up now.

Rad Health Handbook 1970  -3 copies
MOE- 3 copies
Gamma Ray Spect training. Power Safety
EDM 123 Radiation Monitoring
Chem Eng Separation Techniques
HP and RH hand book (Pink ) 2 copies
Reactor incidents study and work book
Optimization of Chemical Process
Soil Properties by Liu
Table of Rad Isotopes by Browne
CSP Study Guide
Stedman's Medical Dictionary
MARSSIM
ION Exchange –Nuclear Fluids
RCT Fundamentals –Rocky Flats
Statistics 3 books
Reporting Technical Information
Implementing MARSSIM book 1 and 2
Advanced ISCOS-Canberra
PWR Chemistry –NUS
NUREG1507
Intro to HP –Cember
Concrete Chemistry
Radiopharmaceuticals by Subramanian
Phase I ENV Assessment
Internal Dosimetry