A review by jsjammersmith
Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb by Jim Ottaviani
3.0
The atomic bomb, and the shadow it has cast upon our culture, is something that has lingered in society's cultural consciousness to the point that we have to make great video games like Fallout 4 in order to relieve some kind of psychological paranoia and panic. That's all a fancy way of saying that the thought of nuclear annihilation scares the crap out of everybody. What's fascinating then is observing writers and comics artists tackling the Manhattan Project, and looking at the imperfect men who made the original weapon of mass destruction.
This book was a good read, but honestly having read Jonathan Fetter-Vorm's graphic novel Trinity, which follows the creation of the Atom bomb while also going into the science, Fallout left me a little frustrated. There are passages that sometimes drag on and on, and while it is fascinating to observe the fall of Oppenheimer's government standing following the war, this book tended to lack the direction and focus I wanted. Johnston deserves credit for focusing purely upon the politics that went into the making of the first atom bomb, and I also do believe this book is worth the reader's time. Graphic novels and comics can do incredible things, and this book would be a great companion work to any history class that deals with the Manhattan Project and the rise of Anti-Communism following World War II. This book is a great example that comics can inform as well as entertain.
As a work of art however, this book suffers from some slow feet, and the need to include lengthy government memos alongside comics panels with no clear way to observe the reading direction.
This book was a good read, but honestly having read Jonathan Fetter-Vorm's graphic novel Trinity, which follows the creation of the Atom bomb while also going into the science, Fallout left me a little frustrated. There are passages that sometimes drag on and on, and while it is fascinating to observe the fall of Oppenheimer's government standing following the war, this book tended to lack the direction and focus I wanted. Johnston deserves credit for focusing purely upon the politics that went into the making of the first atom bomb, and I also do believe this book is worth the reader's time. Graphic novels and comics can do incredible things, and this book would be a great companion work to any history class that deals with the Manhattan Project and the rise of Anti-Communism following World War II. This book is a great example that comics can inform as well as entertain.
As a work of art however, this book suffers from some slow feet, and the need to include lengthy government memos alongside comics panels with no clear way to observe the reading direction.