| Title | : | The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0316381683 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780316381680 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 464 |
| Publication | : | First published July 9, 2019 |
The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb Reviews
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Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Sam Kean, who wrote the delightfully informative Caesar’s Last Breath in 2017 about the topic of gases, including a section on nuclear bombs, delves more deeply into the history of the atomic bomb in The Bastard Brigade. Though the subtitle might lead one to presume that it focuses solely on the Allies’ Alsos mission, the group charged with thwarting Nazi Germany’s development of the atomic bomb, this book is much more wide-ranging in its topics. The Bastard Brigade is a sweeping account of the development of nuclear physics prior to and during WWII, the race to develop a working atomic bomb, and finally the Alsos mission itself.
Part I, set during the prewar years to 1939, introduces readers to the various personalities who will be significant to this slice of history, along with some of the physics discoveries of the time. In particular, we meet Moe Berg, a Jewish major league baseball player from Newark who found he had a taste for international intrigue; the French wife-husband scientist team of Irène (daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie) and Frederic Joliot-Curie; and Boris Pash (originally Pashkovsky), a refugee from the Russian Revolution who became a high school P.E. and science teacher and, eventually, the leader of the Alsos mission. There are many more scientists, including Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi, and Samuel Goudsmit (who later becomes part of Alsos). And, I suspect just because his name and story are so recognizable, there’s also Joe Kennedy Jr., JFK’s older brother who was (according to Kean) obsessed with proving himself a war hero and outshining his younger brother.
With Part II we launch into the WWII years, with a focus on the groundbreaking physics discoveries of many different scientists around the world. The Germans got off to a substantial head start in nuclear weapons research and development, enough to deeply alarm the Allies, who soon threw tremendous resources into their own nuclear programs. At the same time America was working on developing the atomic bomb, it was also assembling a group of scientists, soldiers and spies and sending them on missions in Nazi territory aimed at scuttling Germany’s nuclear program, whether by stealing uranium, sabotaging manufacturing facilities, trying to convince German scientists to defect, or other efforts.
The Alsos mission wasn’t created until late 1943. This part of the story begins at the end of Part IV, on page 253, more than halfway through the book, although there are several prior missions against Germany’s nuclear bomb program. The most intriguing of these are the British and Norwegian operations in 1942 and 1943 aimed at sabotaging a Nazi-held heavy water plant in Vemork, Norway ― a deadly mission for many men.
Kean relates these and other events in an informal, accessible way, focusing on the most interesting events and the personalities of the various players. Though there’s a detailed index and list of sources, this is not a scholarly text. I did sometimes wonder about Kean’s blithe recreation of long-ago conversations and his conclusions about personal motivations, like Joe Kennedy Jr.’s supposed obsession with outdoing his younger brother’s heroics. Though The Bastard Brigade’s subtitle suggests (a) that this book is all about Alsos, and (b) that Alsos actually did sabotage Germany’s atomic bomb, the book’s scope is far broader than that, and the actual degree of success of the sabotage efforts (and their significance with respect to the end result of the German nuclear program) is much more nuanced. The subtitle is a bit misleading, is what I guess I’m saying.
The Bastard Brigade is more in the nature of a traditional historical book than Kean’s previously-published popular science books. Personally I didn’t find it quite as appealing as Caesar’s Last Breath, but it was informative and kept my attention. I’d give this book a strong thumbs up for readers who are interested in learning more about the development of nuclear physics and bomb technology, and about Germany’s WWII atomic bomb program and the Allied efforts to sabotage it.
Initial post: Woohoo, I just got a hardback ARC! Sam Kean wrote the amazing
Caesar's Last Breath and I was absolutely delighted when the publisher offered me his latest book!
Now I just have to keep my husband (a WWII buff) from stealing this one until I'm done. :) -
I received a review copy from the publisher, which has in no way affected my review, and, in fact, I had already preordered the book before they contacted me, because Sam Kean is like a non-fiction Scheherazade, and, frankly, it’s annoying how easy he makes it look to expound upon complex scientific concepts whilst simultaneously regaling us with a crackerjack tale of historical whizzbangery. I’m looking into having him kneecapped, rest assured, but in the gentlest manner in which one can crack a patella, because he seems like a nice guy and I’m not a savage.
In a departure from his prior books, which stitch together discrete and frequently disparate scientific (and often historical) tales around a unifying theme (see, for example, Caesar’s Last Breath, which is excellent and, to date, my favorite book of his), Kean tackles long-form historical narrative here, disseminating scientific smart bombs throughout for maximum brain-detonating effect as he chronicles an eclectic cast of characters intent on a mission with, quite literally, global life-or-death consequences: trying to stop the Nazis from developing nuclear bombs.
Look, Nazis are the ideal bad guys in ANY narrative, because, notwithstanding similarly philosophically situated bigots and ocher-hued United States presidents, EVERYONE hates Nazis, so it’s always a delight to see an intrepid—and, in this case, eccentric—group of people try to take them down; it’s equally fascinating to watch some of the era’s leading scientists, many of them German, wrestle with morality, loyalty to country, and the difficulty of trying to do the right thing when a gun is held to your head (metaphorically at the very least, if not downright literally on occasion).
It takes skill to create tension in a narrative when you know the outcome from the outset, it having been decided more than seven decades ago (SPOILER ALERT: the Nazis did not manage to develop nukes or win World War II; and, while we’re at it, TV gets colorized, we manage to put astronauts on the moon, Milli Vanilli inexplicably becomes a thing, and people get so annoyingly entitled in 2019 that they seem miffed that a network ignores their petition to redo the final season of a popular show just because it didn’t conform to the storylines they wrote in their fan fiction during the show’s two-year hiatus prior to its conclusion; whew…glad we got all of that out of the way, and I hope no one was so shocked by any of those heretofore unrevealed revelations that they just plotzed).
Fortunately, Kean has skill in spades (though not necessarily AT spades; I’ve never seen him evince any particular aptitude for card games, though he could be a covert ringer). Even knowing how it all turns out, you can’t help but sweat a little as the Nazis get a dramatic head start on building nuclear weapons, both by virtue of some of the world’s top physicists being within the Nazi sphere of influence and by a ruthlessly relentless effort to seize the necessary resources (including heavy water from the Vemork processing plant in Norway, where Allied forces undertook a daring but ill-fated commando raid in an effort to sabotage the supply of this critical ingredient*).
Part of this is because of Kean’s skill in fleshing out the characters in the narrative, including former big league baseball player-turned-spy Moe Berg and former high school teacher turned relentless and obsessed intelligence agent Boris Pash; part of it is because the subject matter is just inherently interesting.
What I, whose approach to physics is akin to my approach to karaoke (in other words, my enthusiasm far surpasses my aptitude), particularly appreciate about Kean is his facility for rendering complex concepts understandable. He periodically uses graphs and illustrations to further, um, illustrate his points, but really it’s the clarity and concision of his language that leads to such pellucid explications. Even in a book where the historical narrative is the primary driving force, Kean doesn’t lose sight of the fact that insight into the science behind the race to develop weapons of depressingly devastating deadliness is, in and of itself, fascinating (not unlike me belting out a Bon Jovi deep cut well after midnight, though that’s fascinating for an entirely different reason).
The focus of this particular narrative renders Kean unable to deploy his dad-joke-level humor with as much frequency as previous works, which is disappointing, and he doesn’t go as deep into the science as usual so as to not steal momentum from the core narrative. (Note: from my perspective, calling someone’s humor “dad-joke-level” is perhaps the most complimentary thing I can say about it; so, contrary to being an insult, that was actually lavish praise.)
Still, for a first foray into full-fledged historical narrative, this is a heck of an entertaining read and suggests that Kean is a versatile writer who will take us on a wide range of scientifically adjacent adventures in the years to come. I’m looking forward to every one of them, and still hoping he considers my proposal to
team up on that sitcom.
*For a more detailed and highly gripping account of the raid on Vemork, see
The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb. For an exemplary use of heavy water as a plot device in popular culture, see
this episode of G.I. Joe. -
Sam Kean is already one of my favorite authors, and his latest offering is yet another fantastic blend of science and human interest. The Bastard Brigade unfolds the Allied effort to prevent Nazi Germany from building an atomic bomb. We've all considered the horrifying counterfactual of Hitler obtaining an atomic weapon, and perhaps heard stories about the Germans confiscating "heavy water" or employing scientists like Werner Heisenberg, but in Bastard Brigade we learn just how close they did (and didn't) come to succeeding, what happened to their three year head start, and the happy accidents and subterfuge that stymied their efforts along the way.
It's a multifaceted story with a fascinating cast of characters, from famed baseball catcher Moe Berg (who moonlighted as an agent for the OSS, predecessor to the CIA) and JFK's older brother Joe Jr. (who was considered to be the real political heavyweight in the family, but died in a massive explosion aimed at... well, I don't want to give that one away) to legendary physics duo Irène and Frederic Joliot-Curie (Marie Curie's daughter and son-in-law) and the aforementioned Heisenberg. Many other notables play cameo roles, such as Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, Wernher von Braun (of course), and Lise Meitner. There are many other lesser-known characters, such as the three-war-veteran Borish Pash and the peaked-too-early physicist Samuel Goudsmit, who greatly affected the course of history.
Kean has degree in physics, which comes in handy as he explains the various discoveries and breakthroughs that paved the way for the atomic age. There are helpful illustrations to reify abstract concepts such as artificial radioactivity or uranium-238 transmuting into neptunium-239 and then plutonium-239. Kean has also assembled photos of the various players and locations, and provides (as he often does) online supplements with additional images and notes. You can tell he thrills at the research, and does an excellent job at isolating all the best character-building anecdotes and the most memorable and momentous historical asides. The storytelling is tight, the writing is playful and sharp, the chapters are small, and we jump from location to tracking a handful of separate-but-connected threads at a pace that brings history and science to life. Highly recommended, and not just for your dad who loves WWII books. -
Breezy, entertaining account of Allies' spies who investigated the Nazi's progress in building the atomic bomb. The Nazis program had advanced more than I realized. Interesting backstory given on Joe Kennedy, Jr., Moe Berg, and other colorful characters. Some easy to understand sections describe splitting the atom and other nuclear stuff.
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Sam Kean has shed light on a WWII subject that until now has remained in the shadows. "The Bastard Brigade" is the true story of the renegade scientists and spies who sabotaged the nazi development of the atomic bomb. Who knew that such a raucous and deadly fight to the finish line took place?
"The leaders of the Manhattan Project were alarmed to learn that Nazi Germany was far outpacing the Allies in nuclear weapons research and development. As D-Day loomed, they assembled a rough and motley crew of geniuses - dubbed the Alsos Mission - and sent them careening into Axis territory to spy on, sabotage, and even assassinate members of Nazi Germany's feared Uranium Club."
The goal of Alsos, in addition to abducting the scientists, was to appropriate scientific data, heavy water and uranium ore. Tough assignment, given that the Nazi scientists would rather burn, bury, or sink those atomic gains rather than let them slip into the hands of the Alies.
The Alsos mission was populated by colorful characters. Samuel Goudsmit was chief scientific advisor. Moe Berg was an ex-major league baseball catcher and intellectual. There was a Dutch physicist who, as he worked, his parents were dragged off to a concentration camp. There was the power couple Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, physicist and chemist respectively, who were key fighters in the resistance.
The Nazi equivalent on the Axis side, known as the the Uranium Club, included Otto Hahn, a German chemist, and scientific partner of Lise Meitner. Also working on the Nazi atomic program was Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg - one of the most brilliant physicists in history.
Joe Kennedy Jr. appears in several chapters, sadly resentful of the fame showered upon his younger brother following the PT109 disaster. Desperate for glory, he volunteered for some ridiculously dangerous missions, including a doomed effort to wipe out a supposed atomic missile bunker on the southern coast of France. We all know that egregious ending.
It may have been Kean who dubbed the colorful group "The Bastard Brigade," but I thought it a perfect nom de guerre. They used any and every shrewd method to capture secret files, charts and formulas from German scientists, who used every possible means (often hysterically comical) to hide the priceless data. What they could not hide was burned.
In one nail biting chapter, Alsos Baseball player, intellectual, cum spy Moe Berg was assigned to travel to Zurich, where Heisenberg was lecturing. The professor was to be either abducted or assassinated. Moe Berg carried a pistol in one pocket and a cyanide capsule in the other. . . . I'm not saying. Read the book!
At the time, "Heavy Water" was believed to be a necessary component of the process of production of the atomic bomb. The Allies learned that the Nazis had commandeered a factory in Vermok, Norway which produced heavy water as a byproduct in the manufacture of fertilizer. The Alsos group set out to cripple the plant. Many lives were lost after trying ballooning in and/or rappelling down the steep wall. The factory was finally bombed by the allies.
Then there was the radium. How did Marie Curie leave the country with 2 grams of Radium?
Ironically Sam Keane's next book was:
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
The Allies eventually located and destroyed the nuclear reactor which the Germans were using in their attempt to create an atomic bomb.
The Bastard Brigade is gripping non-fiction for anyone who is interested in a unique, harrowing and brave tale of WWII.
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This was my first Sam Kean read. I enjoyed his narrative style and appreciated his explanations of the science essential to the story. He does a great job of telling the individual stories of the many scientists in Europe and the US, as well as military and political decisions that came together to thwart Hitler’s efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. I learned of this book from the excellent podcast, American History Tellers. I highly recommend that too. I look forward to reading more Sam Kean.
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Magnificent book on the crossroads of science and history
There are the occasional science/history books, that when I reach the end, I go, "Oh no, I want more." The Bastard Brigade is one of those books. I loved it. Sam Kean is a wonderful science writer and this book is exactly what I expect in great science writing: lots of biographical and historical content, well-explained science, and a good sense of humor. Considering the subject matter, the fact that Kean can use humor attests to his skills as a writer. Kudos also to Kevin Cannon for his excellent illustrations. The on-line notes and photographs are another bonus and are worth a look.
This book is a must read for everyone interested in history, regardless of their science background.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes. -
By Kean's own admission B***** Brigade is a departure from his usual style, being a more focused A to B story. Although is some respects the story is much like the Brigade, an intriguing whole pieced together from bits and pieces all over. It's hard to explain, the story isn't a straightforward tale of a crack team thrown together for a challenging task, but more of a compilation of the various missions and people associated with the Nazi Nuclear Bomb project. That's not to say the book was directionless, in fact it was an amazing journey across all corners of the globe with all manner of characters, from Joe Kennedy, to Heisenberg, and many others involved with atomic research.
What I particularly liked about the book is that Kean managed to contain what could have been a huge tome, dealing with WWII, with insight, sensitivity, value and (at appropriate times) humour. I'm not much of a history buff, but I found B***** Brigade followable and inspiring to keep learning more.
Another highlight was Kean's discussion of the unusual relationship of German soldiers to the regime and the rest of the world. There is a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty on this topic, whether the so called 'Uranium Club' purposefully put road blocks in the way of the project because they were against the Nazi Regime, or did they just fail at their task and want to put a positive spin after Germany was defeated?
I must confess a bias, I did receive a free review copy of B***** Brigade, as I did Kean's last book and I just think the author and his books are brilliant as a baseline so you're unlikely to hear much criticism from me on anything by Kean! -
I started reading this book thing that it would give us a story like the movie Inglorious Bastards. I was disappointed.
Part of the book provide general chemistry and physics. I had these courses in college and didn’t really want to revisit them here.
The last part of the book talks about two people hunting German scientists or trying to find their research on fission.
The book is not that exciting to read and can be somewhat boring. -
In the intro we learn that Sean King is first a physicst and second a fan of literature. He explains that he hadn't written a book involving physics because he wanted one where he could tell a story.
This introduction pretty much summarizes my core on the book... The author talks about his first two loves, and neither of those are history.
The Bastard Brigade is a fun story and well tgold. That being said, I can't say it is solid history... It is a fun pulp history. -
The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Plot to Stop the Nazi Atomic Bomb was a surprise in a number of ways. In spite of my interest in WWII, I wasn't sure if this one would be a winner for me. There is some physics involved, which made me a bit leery, but Sam Kean keeps it simple even for the layman, and the oddball (and totally real) characters involved are fascinating examples of all the strengths and flaws human beings can exhibit.
from description: From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold story of a renegade group of scientists and spies determined to keep Adolf Hitler from obtaining the ultimate prize: a nuclear bomb.
Some of the information was already familiar to me because I've read a lot of WWII nonfiction, but not in the same detail.
I knew about the attempts to sabotage the Venmorck Heavy Water facility in Norway to prevent the Germans from gaining access to heavy water for nuclear experiments, but not how many on died on the original British attempt or any details about Operation Grouse and the unbelievable hardships of the Norwegian team.
I knew about Marie Curie, but not that she was asked not to attend the ceremony for her second Nobel Prize for moral reasons--because after the death of her husband, she was having an affair with a married scientist. She attended anyway.
And I had no idea about her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband Frederick Joliot-Curie's experiments, their connection to heavy water, and Frederick's work with the Resistance.
I knew about Moe Berg, the baseball catcher turned spy, but not about the details of his career and that during baseball's off seasons, he attended the Sorbonne and graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law School. Casey Stengel called him "the strangest man ever to play baseball."
I knew almost nothing about the scientists involved other than the most famous names, but all of these men and women came alive as real people, not just historical footnotes.
Although I had some quibbles about the author insertions in parentheticals or italics, the book was easy to read, fascinating, and informative. Many missions failed or missed, and the book doesn't present any of these individuals as comic book heroes or paragons, many of them had no background in clandestine activities and were eccentric in one way or another, but each one played a vital role in helping prevent Germany achieving nuclear power.
Read in May. Blog review scheduled for June 23.
NetGalley/Little, Brown, & Co
Nonfiction/WWII. July 9, 2019. Print length: 464 pages. -
Ogni tanto succede, credo a ogni lettore. Leggi dell’uscita di un libro, lo compri, lo leggi e hai la precisa impressione che sia stato scritto per suscitare il TUO interesse.
A misura.
Io me lo immagino Sam Keane che chiama la sua casa editrice, il suo agente e i suoi editor e fa: “Oh, volevo scrivere un libro che piacesse a quello di Capitolo23. Ci metto una storia vera dalla seconda guerra mondiale, un po’ di spiegazioni fisiche e chimiche che non ci capirà un neutrone ma lo affascinano come fa il “non saputo”, un po’ di azione nel descrivere i tentativi bellici di fermare gli sviluppi atomici del Terzo Reich, inclusi commandos sulla neve e qualche bombardamento aereo. Poi ci metto alcuni personaggi pazzeschi tipo una stella del baseball diventata spia e ambiento qualche scena in Italia”
“Eh, ok, ma verrà fuori tomo bello alto”
“Chisseciava, quello ha un po’ di tempo sotto l’ombrellone, vedrai che apprezza. Sentire voi Adelphi?”
Deve essere andata esattamente così. -
I heard an interview with the author on Science Friday and ordered the book immediately. Wow, I started reading it this morning and I can barely put it down. The subtitle is completely, accurately descriptive, it's packed with physics, war, spies, fascinating characters, history--this a GREAT read with snark, adventure, intrigue, war, suspense and drama. It's exceptionally well written dealing with the science without condescension or confusion and the real-life individuals come across as humans with "souls and elbows".
The short chapters make it easy to pick back up when you find a few minutes to sneak in a quick read and makes it well suited to summer reading on the beach, porch, picnic, on a bench on your lunch break. Stop reading this review now and buy a copy or get your name on the wait list at your library. -
Wow, just wow! This was a great read, especially if you’d like to know more about WWII without the history textbook feel. This book reads like a novel and follows a very specific group of people who were associated with the development of the technology and theory behind the atomic bomb. I like that the author includes insight from both sides of the war and humanizes both sides, while still holding to true events. I learned a lot about one of my favorite topics in history. The more I learn about this war, the more I realize how messy and complicated war really is, with good and evil on both sides of the front.
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Oh! Those scientists. They are amazing!
I think I have read all of Sam Kean's books. He is a terrific author. -
A Nazi atomic bomb? The fear that Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, and other Nobel-winning German physicists would develop nuclear weapons for Adolf Hitler began to seize hold in the upper reaches of the American government when Albert Einstein’s letter to President Franklin Roosevelt arrived in the White House in August 1939.
But it wasn’t long before speculation about German nuclear research reached a much wider public. “No one had heard of uranium fission before January 1939; by December, more than a hundred papers on the topic had appeared worldwide.” And the fear of a Nazi atomic bomb was well founded. “Two years before the start of the Manhattan Project” . . . Germany’s “Uranium Club had scientists working on two key aspects of nuclear weapons: enriching uranium and producing a self-sustaining chain reaction. The German atomic bomb project was off to a rip-roaring start.”
Given the universal perception that German physicists were the best in the world, the Allies feared a nuclear attack almost throughout the war—as late as the middle of 1944. And that was even without assuming the Nazis had succeeded in building an atomic bomb, because only a small quantity of radioactive material is needed. “Fear of dirty bombs continued to fester in the minds of American official in the run-up to June 6,” and planes were sent with Geiger counters to sweep the northern coast of France in advance of the Normandy invasion. Unaccountably, then, the Allies had launched the Alsos Mission to investigate how far the Nazis had progressed in the field only in September 1943. “People called it the Bastard Unit” because it worked independently, hence the title of Sam Kean’s often jaw-dropping account of the perilous effort to explore and undermine the German nuclear program.
Other efforts to undermine the German atomic bomb project
The Alsos Mission was not the Allies’ first or only effort to hobble the Nazi atomic bomb project, and for good reason. In fact, fully aware that the Germans used large quantities of heavy water in their research, there were multiple efforts almost throughout the war (1940-44) to blow up the world’s only large-scale deuterium-production plant at Vemork in Norway, to steal huge shipments of the stuff, and (in 1944) to destroy a ship thought to be carrying tons of it on its way to Germany. But it wasn’t until September 1943 that the British and Americans launched the Alsos mission.
The broad scope of the mission
Great Britain and the United States organized the Alsos Mission in the wake of the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy to assess the Nazis’ progress toward creating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the technology to deliver them—and to prevent their capture by the Soviet Union. In addition to the nuclear program, the mission focused on the German “Vengeance-weapons“—the V-1 cruise missile, V-2 ballistic missile, and V-3 cannon—all of which American military leaders feared might carry atomic warheads. The more than one hundred soldiers, spies, and scientists who eventually joined the mission followed closely behind the front lines in Italy, France, and Germany as the Allies closed in on the German heartland. From time to time they crossed into enemy-held territory to grab valuable resources before the Germans could destroy them or snatch Nazi scientists before they could escape or fall into Soviet hands.
Characters out of the history books
The amazing tale Sam Kean tells in The Bastard Brigade revolves around a handful of extraordinary characters:
** Moe Berg, the eccentric former Major League Baseball catcher who spoke at least half a dozen languages and worked as a spy for the OSS: “he could read hieroglyphics and recite Edgar Allan Poe’s entire poetic oeuvre . . . [and] bought dictionaries ‘to see if they were complete.'”
** Dutch-born American physicist Samuel Goudsmit, the chief scientist for the Alsos Mission whose parents died at Auschwitz
** Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg, author of the Uncertainty Principle and head of the Nazi atomic bomb program. Kean describes him as “essentially a boy scout with a hypertrophied brain.”
** The Nobel Laureate husband-and-wife team of Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie, both active in the French Resistance
** Joe Kennedy, Jr., JFK’s older brother who perished in a spectacular plane crash as a Navy pilot in World War II. Kennedy was engaged in a vainglorious effort to best his brother’s medal-winning feats on PT-109. He died on what in hindsight was clearly a futile mission to destroy what Dwight Eisenhower feared was a German launch site in northern France for nuclear weapons.
** US Army Colonel Boris Pash, a veteran of the White Army in the Russian Civil War who taught physical education and science at Hollywood High and later headed the Alsos Mission for the Allies
Every one of these exceptional people has been the subject of multiple references in history books and, in some cases, many biographies as well. The same goes for many of the fourteen people Kean cites at the back of the book in a list of minor characters. The Bastard Brigade is, above all, an account about people whose stories deserve to be told.
How this book is organized
Kean has done an admirable job organizing the unruly material that underpins his story. The Bastard Brigade is divided into six sections, each roughly corresponding to one year of the war (“Prewar, to 1939,” “1940-41,” “1942,” and so forth). In each section, he traces the trajectory of the principal characters as they moved ever closer to intersecting in the Alsos mission. But in doing so, Kean frequently digresses, layering in colorful tales that help to flesh out the leading actors in the high-stakes game of nuclear competition. Many of those digressions might have hit the cutting-room floor in a book written by an academic historian. But for Kean—and the reader—they add color and depth that would otherwise be missing from a recitation of facts in chronological order.
Kean’s use of these often little-known episodes and insights is sometimes delightful. Here are just a few examples:
** Moe Berg’s tendency to wander off on his own when he became bored with his missions for the OSS.
** The facts that Joe Kennedy “was a terrible pilot” and the plane that killed him was a flying bomb jam-packed with explosives
** The German plans for the V-3 Hochdruckpumpe (high-pressure pump) or “Busy Lizzie,” a 416-foot cannon that shot nine-foot bullets.
The author’s style is . . . well, informal
Sam Kean writes in a style that’s best described as loose. Casual, if you will. Conversational. Vernacular. Even occasionally drifting over the line into sexual innuendo or scatological allusions. This approach makes for an easier and faster read, but it can be jarring. And at times it detracts from the impact of the surprises he dug out of the historical record. The upshot is that Kean’s style cheapens this otherwise revealing and enjoyable book. -
Forse due e mezzo.
Argomento interessante, ma Sam Kean l'ho trovato volgare e ciarliero, soprattutto in veste di storico. -
7/10
La storia di base è molto interessante e devo dire di esserne rimasto a tratti davvero sbalordito.
Nel suo complesso però, sfortunatamente, risulta essere un libro a correnti alterne che non si preoccupa di saltare da un'argomento all'altro.
Si rivela molto acurato su determinati punti di vista e decisamente troppo prolisso su alcuni aspetti a mio parere marginali. -
fascinating history I wasn't aware of, with the German Uranium Club and Heisenberg, planned V3 launchers along the French coast, and plots to sabotage heavy water facility in Norway
light smattering of science, and the history of nuclear science
interesting characters too, particularly Moe Berg, spy, poly-linguist, baseball pro
not sure on the need for so much focus on Kennedy's, felt almost shoe-horned in. -
In previous reviews, I have asked what the purpose of a "history" should be (and have caught shit for insisting that a good history serve as a mirror of our contemporary times.) I would think that given the author's note at the beginning of The Bastard Brigade that Sam Kean would likely disagree with thoughts as to what purpose a history should serve. Kean explicitly states at the beginning that he had never had cause to write about physics (because apparently that is his background) until he discovered "the Bastard Brigade" and he felt he needed to tell their story (even though, as you read, you find out that given the dramatis personae it's not an actual thing--but more on that in a moment.) It is with that assertion that Kean immediately runs counter to my expectations of what a history should accomplish, but since he sets expectations from the get-go, I was willing to let it slide.
If I have a quibble with this book, it is that there never actually a "bastard brigade" but different groups that were described as such by those around them. As such, Kean is allowed to sub in whatever characters he wishes to fit the umbrella he is containing the narrative under. There are definitely characters involved in what ends up becoming a loosely connected series of stories--former MLB catcher Moe Berg's second career as a spy (I believe his inclusion in the book lead to an excerpt being posted on Deadspin, which is where I learned about it) and the oddity of Berg himself is one of the better parts of this book. However, the inclusion of Joseph Kennedy Jr. seems a bit of a reach for a book about "renegade scientists and spies" (he was neither) and really only seems to serve for a small detail that occurs in the epilogue. In addition, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (he of the uncertainty principle) also doesn't seem to fit the bill, but every narrative needs to have some sort of villain, and while he doesn't come off as being Hitler-type evil, Heisenberg fits here.
The story of the Nazi atomic bomb and the attempts to thwart it is interesting, and there is likely a lot here you don't know. But some of it was unnecessary and I think I would have enjoyed it more had there not been some unneeded detours that really had nothing to do with what the book was supposed to be about. -
I'd like to rate this higher, if only because I enjoyed a couple of his other books. Kean's research is impressive. He was also able to keep my interest page by page. And I really appreciate how he adds the odd detail here and there to bring a scene to life.
There are just one too many issues preventing that 4th star. For instance, Kean's shifts between the semi-formal yet conversational and the familiar are distracting, with the sarcastic asides being particularly jarring. The inclusion of Joe Kennedy as a central character confused me, as his role turned out to be marginal at best. Finally, there was no true brigade, just loosely connected attempts to prevent Nuclear Nazis, who just weren't a real threat to begin with. Their leading scientists were either middling toadies, sent to combat, secretly subversive, or fled the country. If the Manhattan Project could be equated to a successful moonshot, German efforts to build a bomb were like a bunch of kids playing with paper airplanes.
Still, Kean does a great job portraying Moe Berg, the Curies, the Italian radiation lab, the first self-sustaining chain reaction, and the attempts to prevent heavy water from Norway from falling into Hitler's hands. He also gets points for dropping in contextual nuggets and reminders about things such as the spies at Berkeley and Oppenheimer's character flaws. And his descriptions and diagrams of how atomic reactions and bombs work are easy to follow and informative.
This one may not be Kean's best book, but it is worth reading (as is Kean more generally). -
What an excellent book written by one of my favorite authors. This fact-filled non-fiction about the group of men whose main purpose was to destroy Hitler’s nuclear program, reads like a novel. Dubbed as the Bastard Brigade because of their covert mission under no one’s official authority, this group (officially named “Alsos”) of Allied scientists, soldiers and spies worked tirelessly, not only to hunt for Hitler’s weapons that he would’ve used against the Allies, but also to gain access to Germany’s scientific research, materials and personnel before the Soviets got them.
This story introduced me to some of the most interesting players in this nuclear race narrative: Alsos’s leader, Col. Pash, Jewish scientist Goudsmit, pro-baseball-player-turned-spy Moe Berg, and the US President Kennedy’s older brother Joe. The book also covered the roles world famous scientists, like Neils Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and the Joliet-Curies (Marie and Pierre Curie’s Nobel-winning daughter and her husband), played in the arms race.
I hope this great story will be made into a movie. The work of these courageous men, often exposed not only to the obvious perils of war but also to the invisible still-unknown dangers of nuclear science, needs to be widely known. -
A super interesting story that highlights chemists, physicists, and even professional baseball players taking movie-like roles as wartime action heroes, tasked with preventing Nazi Germany from outpacing the United States in the development of nuclear weapons. It was really interesting and disheartening to see how chemistry and physics turned from international, collaborative efforts into the closed-off, espionage-riddled world of wartime research. Well known scientific figures like Heisenberg, Bohr, and Curie went from colleagues to enemies, working against one another to prevent their own decimation at the hands of their once friends. Every story was intertwined, and the author did an excellent job of turning a handful of interrelated events into one cohesive story that felt like an action movie.
What was more surprising was the absurdity of many of the missions carried out by these scientists-turned-commandos. Marie Curie’s daughter was hunted across Europe over a few barrels of water; remote-control planes packed with napalm were remotely flown into fake rocket launch sites; a Red Sox player, tutored in physics by Albert Einstein, was sent to assassinate a Nobel Prize winner at a physics conference; a geologist nearly caused hundreds of thousands of soil sampling tools to be scattered along the entire coastline of France. The stories would all seem unbelievable even in a movie, yet they all actually happened, and they all prevented Nazi Germany from dropping the first nukes. This book was extremely amusing to read, and this is such an interesting piece of history that isn’t common knowledge. It’s accessible, too. You don’t need to be a World War II history buff, a physicist, or a chemist to enjoy and understand the scientific discoveries and chaotic political events at each step in the story of the race for nuclear weapons.
Also, there was a legit plan from America’s O.S.S. to make Hitler look weak by injecting estrogen into all his food so that Germans would be demoralized by seeing him with a rack. The plan was executed but failed at the last minute. America was seriously going to yassify Hitler. Wild. -
I'm a big fan of science books, but not so much of history, so I was a bit skeptical when I started this book. I found it very enjoyable as I went along, largely due to the author's very novel-like style. It's told as a tipsy raconteur might tell war stories to regale the crowd. The author uses humor and slang liberally. Once he wrote that when one of the physicists commandeered a colonel's Jeep, "a big swinging dick was royally pissed off." Beers were brewskis and an assassination attempt might be described as trying to bump someone off. When a spy fell for a female physicist, the author observed that "cupid is a perverse little imp."
He spent more time on the personalities than I would have liked, especially on Joe Kennedy, JFK's older brother. He was a WWII pilot, and apparently not a very good one, whose only motivation was to become a war hero so that he could win the presidency someday. He was reckless, self-centered, obscenely ambitious, and had almost nothing to do with the central topic of the Nazi atomic bomb. He did, however, give his life on a volunteer mission to blow up what was thought to be a new Nazi superweapon. One aspect revealed in the book that was more troubling than entertaining was how many of scientists who worked for Germany rationalized their continuing to help the Nazi regime, even while claiming they hated the Nazis. Virtually none of the "renegade scientists" in the title were German; those people continued to try to defeat the Allies. It was Dutch, Russian, French, and American scientists who fit that description. That was illuminating, however, and helped solidify the serious side of the book. All in all, it's a worthwhile read. -
Nice solid read. Only concern I had was some of the chapters were only a few pages long.
This is one of those real life missions put together by fate, necessity, and a healthy dosage of fear that reads like a spy novel....yet its all declassified and true. I found new people to follow, new stories to discover and new connections were made.
This book marries the idolized " Big Science" narrative that is predominatly associated with the Manhattan Project and skillfulky ties together how that narrative was developed- in part because of the fear surrounding the unknown realities of the German Nuclear Bomb program. The down and dirty plays with the realities.
The author also does a very skillful job of making some Nazis human. No longer is it faceless evil, it's scientists dedicated to the idea of pure science at the behest of an evil regime. A great take on the realities of life in Germany during the war.
I still find myself despising Heisenberg however.
If you like science, warfare, oddball characters, and too good to be true stories, this book is for you
