Books about Plutonium from Amazon.com

When plutonium was first manufactured at Berkeley in the spring of 1941, there was so little of it that it was not visible to the naked eye. It took a year to accumulate enough so that one could actually see it. Now there is so much that we don’t know what to do to get rid of it. We have created a monster.

The history of plutonium is as strange as the element itself. When scientists began looking for it, they did so simply in the spirit of inquiry, not certain whether there were still spots to fill on the periodic table. But the discovery of fission made it clear that this still-hypothetical element would be more than just a scientific curiosity—it could be a powerful nuclear weapon.

As it turned out, it is good for almost nothing else. Plutonium’s nuclear potential put it at the heart of the World War II arms race—the Russians found out about it through espionage, the Germans through independent research, and everybody wanted some. Now, nearly everyone has some—the United States alone has about 47 metric tons—but it has almost no uses besides warmongering. How did the product of scientific curiosity become such a dangerous burden?

In his new history of this complex and dangerous element, noted physicist Jeremy Bernstein describes the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki. This is the first book to weave together the many strands of plutonium’s story, explaining not only the science but the people involved..
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As World War II reached its climax, the U.S. push to create an atomic bomb spawned an industry the size of General Motors almost overnight But a little-understood human dilemma quickly arose: How was all the radiation involved in building and testing the bomb going to affect the countless researchers, soldiers, and civilians exposed to it? Government scientists scrambled to find out, fearing cancer outbreaks and worse, but in their urgency conducted classified experiments that bordered on the horrific: MIT researchers fed radioactive oatmeal to residents of a state boys' school outside Boston; prisoners in Washington and Oregon were subjected to crippling blasts of direct radiation; and patients with terminal illnesses (or so it was hoped) were secretly injected with large doses of plutonium--survivors were surreptitiously monitored for years afterward.

It was these plutonium guinea pigs that set journalist Eileen Welsome on her decade-long search to expose this grisly chapter of America's atomic age, a feat that would earn her the Pulitzer Prize. In the impressively thorough and compelling Plutonium Files, Welsome recounts her work with a reporter's gift for description, characterizing early radiation researchers as "a curious blend of spook, scientist, and soldier," tirelessly interviewing survivors and their families, and providing social and political context for a complex and far-reaching scandal. Perhaps most damning is that not only did these cold-war experiments violate everything from the Hippocratic Oath to the Nuremberg Code, Welsome reveals, they were often ill-conceived, inconclusive, and repetitive--"they were not just immoral science, they were bad science." --Paul Hughes.
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Karen Silkwood, an employee of the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant, was killed in a car crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in 1974. Silkwood was a union activist concerned about health and safety issues at the plant, and her death at age twenty-eight was considered by many to be highly suspicious. Was it Kerr-McGee's revenge on a troublesome whistleblower? Or was it part of a much larger conspiracy reaching from the Atomic Energy Commission to the FBI and the CIA?

Richard Rashke leads us through the myriad charges and countercharges, the theories and facts, and reaches conclusions based solely on the evidence in hand. Originally published in 1981, his book offers a vivid, edgy picture of the tensions that racked this country in the 1970s. However, the volume is not only an important historical document. Complex, fascinating characters populate this compelling insider's view of the nuclear industry. The issues it explores--whistleblowers, worker safety, the environment, and nuclear vulnerability--have lost none of their relevance today, twenty-six years after Silkwood's white Honda Civic was found trapped in a concrete culvert near Oklahoma City.

For the Cornell edition, Rashke has written a Preface and three short chapters that explore what has been learned about Silkwood since the book's original publication, explain what happened to the various actors in the drama, and discuss the long-term effects of the events around Silkwood's death..
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Trinity was the first test of technology for a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at a location 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what is now White Sands Missile Range, headquartered near Alamogordo. Trinity was a test of an implosion-design plutonium bomb. The Fat Man bomb, using the same conceptual design, was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, a few weeks later. The detonation was equivalent to the explosion of around 20 kilotons of TNT, and is usually considered as the beginning of the Atomic Age.

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Justin just wanted to enjoy life. After all, being a player seemed to come naturally Pimp'in women and breaking hearts was his specialty If only his player hate'in wife Alexis would conform to the rules of the game, that would make life even better.

Justin can't take all the credit for his fabulous lifestyle, there are a cast of characters contributing to his lifelong pursuit of conquering women. There is his boy Hammer who maintains VIP status in all of Miami's clubs, Sheila, the hotel maid with the "oh so fat a--", his loving yet high rolling mom Sylvia and his estranged father Henry (affectionately referred to as "The Rooster").

Settle in with Dumb as Me and experience a day in the life of Justin Drake, THE MAN.

Not to forget...the intoxicating, mysterious Eden. The one woman that manages to show Justin just what pimp'in is..
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Jonar Nader knows his thoughts on business and leadership won't appeal to everyone But this writer-consultant-speaker-philosopher, who grandiosely calls himself a Post-Tentative Virtual Surrealist, certainly doesn't lack for ideas. Between one section on skills for today ("life management" and creativity) and another on those for the future (management trends and customer service), he addresses broad topics like leadership and teamwork and how they can more effectively enable people to coexist. Some comments seem intentionally inflammatory ("stop the insatiable urge to survey everything that moves" and "diplomacy is a waste of time"), but many are tied to proposals for personal and corporate advancement that are truly intriguing, even if they have little chance of widespread adoption. Case in point: his proposition for "fluid shares," a compensatory plan in which everyone is paid equally and rewarded or penalized equally according to profits. Personnel at the top obviously won't like this, but Nader brushes aside this objection, claiming it's for the general good. "Those who are infuriated (should) resign gracefully because their selfish attitude is the one that has been conflicting with the organization for a long time," he writes. Few will find such notions truly feasible, but open-minded readers may appreciate where he's going and perhaps even develop some ideas for shaking things up on their own. --Howard Rothman.
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