From the very start, at the age of twenty-one, Herbert York was swept into the century's most daring and dangerous technical achievement, the making of the atomic bomb. In Arms and the Physicist, York takes us backstage to witness key events of our time: to the Manhattan Project for the birth of the atomic bomb; to Lawrence Livermore where the H-bomb was built; to Washington to eavesdrop on how post-war history was being forged; and to Geneva where he tried to stem the madness. Readers will meet some of our greatest heros and villains--Lawrence, Oppenheimer, Weisskopf, Teller, General Groves, President Eisenhower, and a cast of hundreds--friends, colleagues, enemies, who for more than half a century, held the fate of the world in their hands.