History

Do you trust your calculations? This book review is about The Los Alamos Primer, the first lectures on how to build an atomic bomb, by Robert Serber. The review focuses on the basic calculations and physics knowledge of the Manhattan Project scientists. Since the Primer is a collection of 1943 lecture notes combined with Serber’s hindsight commentary, it corrects some of the original calculations and measurements by comparing them with modern values. This makes it fascinating to see how close—or off—the physicists were at the time. For anyone interested in the topic, I highly recommend reading both the Primer and The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, one of my all-time favorite books. ...

Unexplainable Differences? This book by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, published in 2012, explores why living standards and prosperity differ so much across societies that seem to share common geography or culture. Many theories, such as those based on geography, culture, or ignorance, suggest these differences should not be so large. Yet, as the authors show, a simple fence can separate success from failure. A key example in the book is Nogales, a city split by the border between the USA and Mexico. In the northern section, Nogales, Arizona, people enjoy a higher standard of living, better life expectancy, and strong property and voting rights. Just across the fence in Nogales, Sonora (Mexico), people face weak education, higher child mortality, political corruption, and average household incomes that are about a third of those in Arizona. Further similar examples from the book include the difference between North and South Korea, the United States and Russia, or parts of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. ...