Book Review - Building the H Bomb: A Person History

Building the H Bomb A Personal History Kenneth W. Ford Softcover, 222 pages ISBN 978-9814618793 World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 2015 Personal memoirs can be interesting for their personal point of view especially when the events discussed are at the nexus of some world-changing event. In the right hands, it can be a very visceral experience with unique claims to the story based on eye-witness observations, personal conversation, friendship, and perhaps even more intimate relationships with the players who changed history. Successful telling these kinds of stories depends on much not the least of which is ones role or station at the moments defining the story. And of course, one must be able to nimbly relate these accounts interweaving an onscene perspective into the overall historical account. In Building the H Bomb, we fall somewhere between accomplishment and failure.