ABOUT THIS BOOK

John Canaday analyzes a variety of texts produced by physicists before, during, and after the Second World War, including Niels Bohr’s "The Quantum Postulate"; the Blegdamsvej Faust, a parody of Goethe’s Faust that cast physicists as its principle characters; The Los Alamos Primer, the technical lectures used for training at Los Alamos; scientists’ descriptions of their work and of the Trinity test; and Leo Szilard’s post-war novella, The Voice of the Dolphins.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

John Canaday is a prize-winning poet and playwright who has been a Watson Fellow and the Starbuck Fellow in Poetry at Boston University. He tutors students in literature, writing, history, mathematics, and physics.

REVIEWS

"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

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