Rider of the Pale Horse
A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond
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Rider of the Pale Horse
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Narrated by:
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John Chester
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By:
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McAllister Hull
About this listen
A scientist's recollection of his life as a junior member of the Manhattan Project, Rider of the Pale Horse recounts McAllister Hull's involvement in various nuclear-related enterprises during and after World War II.
Fresh from a summer job working with explosives in the chemistry department of an ordnance plant, Hull was drafted in 1943, after his freshman year in college. Unlike other accounts written by scientists and historians of that era, Hull's narrative offers a realistic picture of the dangerous and messy job that GIs and civilian powder men were asked to do. Life in the workshops where bomb components were constructed was very different from life in the offices where they were designed.
Hull's description of his postwar work supporting the Bikini Atoll tests in the Pacific and the early concerns about the effects of a hydrogen bomb explosion illuminate the Dark Age of nuclear weaponry.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
From the New York Times best-selling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the 20th century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Strong finish
- By David's Opinions and Reviews on 05-04-14
By: Craig Nelson
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Sun in a Bottle
- The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking
- By: Charles Seife
- Narrated by: Bill Weideman
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 134
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 74
For the past 50 years, governments and research teams have tried to bottle the sun with lasers, magnets, sound waves, and particle beams, struggling to harness the power of fusion. Again and again, they have failed, disgracing generations of scientists. Throughout this fascinating journey, Charles Seife introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Focused on the Lone Wolves
- By Robert Goldston on 11-14-08
By: Charles Seife
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Dark Sun
- The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Richard Rhodes
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 469
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 396
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 398
Richard Rhodes' landmark history of the atomic bomb won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in this majestic new masterpiece of history, science, and politics, he tells for the first time the secret story of how and why the hydrogen bomb was made, and traces the path by which this supreme artifact of 20th-century technology became the defining issue of the Cold War.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Abridged??
- By Delano on 04-17-13
By: Richard Rhodes
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The Disappearing Spoon
- And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6,057
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,787
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,796
Reporter Sam Kean reveals the periodic table as it’s never been seen before. Not only is it one of man's crowning scientific achievements, it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Great Narration, But...
- By Henny Button on 09-18-10
By: Sam Kean
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Big Science
- Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Bob Saouer
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 101
Since the 1930s, the scale of scientific endeavors has grown exponentially. The birth of Big Science can be traced to Berkeley, California, nearly nine decades ago, when a resourceful young scientist pondered his new invention and declared, "I'm going to be famous!" Ernest Orlando Lawrence's cyclotron would revolutionize nuclear physics, but that was only the beginning of its impact.This is the incredible story of how one invention changed the world and of the man principally responsible for it all. Michael Hiltzik tells the riveting full story here for the first time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An informative and thought-provoking book
- By Jean on 08-23-15
By: Michael Hiltzik
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Chasing Heisenberg
- The Race for the Atom Bomb
- By: Michael Joseloff
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
After a devastating run of German victories, Allied troops are beginning to halt Hitler’s advance. But far from the battlefields, Allied scientists are struggling. Intelligence reports put them a distant second behind the Germans in a competition that could determine the outcome of the war: the race to build the world’s first nuclear weapon. For the Allies’ top scientists, the race is deeply personal. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Samuel Goudsmit have known Hitler’s chief atomic scientist, Werner Heisenberg, for years.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Good Overview/Introduction to the Bomb Race
- By Ashlyn on 08-05-20
By: Michael Joseloff
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The Second Kind of Impossible
- The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter
- By: Paul J. Steinhardt
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 231
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 204
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 204
When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s 35-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter - one that raises the possibility of new materials with never-before-seen properties but that violates laws set in stone for centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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In anticipation of low review marks...
- By James S. on 05-14-19
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Tuxedo Park
- A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
- By: Jennet Conant
- Narrated by: John Kroft
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic book, weak technical execution
- By Paul on 10-13-18
By: Jennet Conant
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Ignition!
- An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
- By: John Drury Clark, Isaac Asimov - foreward
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 667
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 550
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 547
Ignition! is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. This search was a hazardous enterprise carried out by rival labs who worked against the known laws of nature, with no guarantee of success or safety. John Drury Clark writes with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy about the development of the explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. The resulting volume is as much a memoir as a work of history, sharing a behind-the-scenes view of an enterprise that eventually took men to the moon.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Science man lists names of chemicals for 9 hours
- By Adrian on 05-06-19
By: John Drury Clark, and others
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Burning the Sky
- Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space
- By: Mark Wolverton
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 401
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 349
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 346
After the Soviet Union proved to the United States that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Amid this rising tension, eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: detonating nuclear warheads in space to create an artificial radiation belt that would fry incoming ICBMs. Known as Operation Argus, this plan is the most secret and riskiest experiment in history, and classified details of these nuclear tests have been long obscured.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Extraordinary interesting history
- By Magnus Almgren on 10-23-20
By: Mark Wolverton
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The Idea Factory
- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
- By: Jon Gertner
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,011
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 844
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 845
In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell Labs scientists introduced concepts that still propel many of today’s most exciting technologies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story -- horrible pauses
- By Rodney on 01-29-13
By: Jon Gertner
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The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
- The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
- By: Richard P. Feynman
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,819
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,566
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,558
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other. From his ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will delight anyone interested in the world of ideas.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting, but material is covered in better book.
- By Erlend on 04-06-16
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First War of Physics
- The Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-1949
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 17 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 75
An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding: the monumental race to build the first atomic weapons.
Rich in personality, action, confrontation, and deception, The First War of Physics is the first fully realized popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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For all atom bomb and physics nerds
- By Jodie Swafford on 11-30-18
By: Jim Baggott
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Tesla
- Inventor of the Electrical Age
- By: W. Bernard Carlson
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 354
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Story4 out of 5 stars 303
Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A detailed examination of Tesla's work
- By Jean on 02-01-14
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The Day We Found the Universe
- By: Marcia Bartusiak
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
From one of our most acclaimed science writers: a dramatic narrative of the discovery of the true nature and startling size of the universe, delving back past the moment of revelation to trace the decades of work--by a select group of scientists--that made it possible.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth the Effort
- By Roy on 08-13-09
By: Marcia Bartusiak
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27,916
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21,198
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21,094
Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson