"In the Shadow of the Bomb narrates how two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists - J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe - came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create. In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom.

By examining how Bethe and Oppenheimer - two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters - struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War."--BOOK JACKET.