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Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy, by Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel (Times Books, $25). Theodore Hall '44 entered Harvard as a junior at the age of 16. He joined the physics staff of the Manhattan Project at 18 and quickly gave the Soviets the secret of the making of the atomic bomb. His spying continued after the war. He was aided by a Harvard roommate, Saville Sax '46. Hall is alive, in England, and makes no apologies. He says that in 1944 he "was worried about the dangers of an American monopoly of atomic weapons if there should be a postwar depression." The authors refuse to judge him and tell their tale with meticulous care and no sensationalism.
 Bridges:
A History of the World's Most Famous and Important Spans, by Judith
Dupré (Black Dog and Leventhal, $22.98), features an interview
with architect Frank O. Gehry, Ds '57. The book, virtually unshelvable
at 7 3/4 inches high by 18 1/4wide, is a stunning addition to the coffee
table. WIDENER PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICES |
Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest, by Adrian Desmond, G '76 (Addison-Wesley, $37.50). "Thomas Henry Huxley became Darwin's Rottweiler, instantly recognizable by his deep-set dark eyes and lashing tongue," writes Desmond in this full and lively biography. "Where Darwin held back, Huxley lunged at his limping prey. It was he, not Darwin, who enraptured and outraged audiences in the 1860s with talk of our ape ancestors and cave men. Listeners were agog in a prim, evangelical age."
The Bible As It Was, by James L. Kugel, JF '75, G '77, Starr professor of Hebrew literature (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, $35). Thousands of Harvard undergraduates have taken Kugel's popular course on the Bible. In this handsome book, by no means addressed solely to scholars, he tells how the earliest interpreters shaped the Bible into what we have today.
The Union Station Massacre: The Original Sin of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, by Robert Unger, M.P.A. '93 (Andrews McMeel, $22.95). Unger, head of the urban journalism program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, demonstrates in this narrative history that, contrary to received wisdom, Hoover and his FBI were corrupt from the start.
The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time, by Phyllis Rose '64, Ph.D. '70 (Scribner, $23). From its first chapter, in which Rose realizes that she is Cornelia Otis Skinner, to the 12-page list of recommended reading at the end, this is a consistently engaging memoir of a writing and reading woman at midlife.
What Jazz Is: An Insider's Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz, by Jonny King, J.D. '91 (Walker, $12.95, paper). A Manhattan lawyer by day and by night a cat Downbeat calls "one of the strongest piano voices of the new generation," King here provides an excellent introduction to music some folks find confounding.
Perfect Agreement, by Michael Downing '80 (Counterpoint, $22). In his third novel, former Harvard Magazine staffer Downing juxtaposes the last Shakers and their values with academic functionaries negotiating the straits of political correctness. He tosses in grammar lessons at the ends of chapters as he goes.