"The existence of ‘the bomb’ as a literary device is, Canaday demonstrates, as significant as its military and political reality. A fascinating and literate glimpse at the words, metaphors, texts, and subtexts that have shaped our nuclear age."—Richard Wolfson, author of Nuclear Choices
"Physicists in the first half of this century became caught up in knowledge, ways of doing science, military projects, and social consequences that pushed their means of representation and understanding to the limit. This important study reveals how the Los Alamos physicists adopted literary modes of expression to come to terms with the worlds they were making and transforming."—Charles Bazerman, author of Shaping Written Knowledge
"A revelatory exploration of the relation between literary and scientific languages, which John Canaday analyzes with an exceptional sophistication that combines analytical rigor and a wonderful aesthetic and moral sensibility."—Myra Jehlen, Rutgers University