MixedThe Wall Street Journal...Mr. Kean overemphasizes the external pressures working against Germany’s progress without acknowledging the internal factors that likely did more to impede the development of a bomb ... Mr. Kean’s book breaks no new ground, but attributions to source materials are far from clear. There are no footnotes or endnotes, making it difficult to learn where a quote came from or to look something up. The sources he does cite at the end of the book are listed in an odd manner—alphabetically, by title. My book on the subject isn’t included, though there are facts Mr. Kean uses that likely came from it ... In 59 fast-paced chapters, some only two pages long, Mr. Kean hopscotches around the globe, describing colorful characters, some of whom had only limited or no connection to the Nazi bomb. The result is a popularized account of the external efforts to slow or halt the German atomic program. It all makes for an entertaining tale, one that might entice the reader to pursue some of the more detailed studies in the wide literature on the topic.
