The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb
by Garrett M. Graff
Buy on AmazonThis summer, the world marked 80 years since nuclear weapons were dropped on Japan. The author mostly features voices of the scientific and military personnel involved in the development of the bomb. But it’s interspersed with the memories of those whose lives were uprooted by the work in the United States because of eminent domain and those in Japan who had to live with the deadly, painful, lifelong consequences of the bomb. The audiobook version includes a full cast recording.
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"This summer, the world marked 80 years since nuclear weapons were dropped on Japan. The author mostly features voices of the scientific and military personnel involved in the development of the bomb. But it’s interspersed with the memories of those whose lives were uprooted by the work in the United States because of eminent domain and those in Japan who had to live with the deadly, painful, lifelong consequences of the bomb. The audiobook version includes a full cast recording."
NPR Books We Love — 2025 · apps.npr.org
"This oral history of the Manhattan Project and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is dramatically made aural, thanks to the talents of some 30 narrators, plus the author. This audiobook features snippets of first-person accounts of those who lived the history. The individuals included number more than 450, and most of the narrators portray many characters, with Edoardo Ballerini narrating the connective tissue that binds them all together. Listeners may be so engrossed they don’t think of the production’s tremendous complexity—if they do, they’ll find it all the more astounding. (20.25 hours)"
The Best Multi-Voice Audiobooks of 2025 · fivebooks.com