Description: Physicians were essential to the Manhattan Project, keeping participants and Americans near test sites safe from radiation. But they also downplayed the risks when military exigency demanded. James Nolan tells the story of these conflicted healers, who used their medical authority to enable the most lethal form of warfare humanity has yet devised.
Brief description: James L. Nolan, Jr., is Washington Gladden 1859 Professor of Sociology at Williams College. His previous books include What They Saw in America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb and Reinventing Justice: The American Drug Court Movement.
Review Quotes: Fascinating and disturbing, Atomic Doctors provides a behind-the-scenes view of the birth of the bomb. It's a crucial addition to the literature of the atomic age. It also raises essential questions about science, society, and the moral compromises made in their service.--Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction