The narrative covers people and events from early 20th century discoveries leading to the science of nuclear fission, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Broad praised the book in The New York Times review, writing that it "offers not only the best overview of the century's pivotal event, but a probing analysis of what it means for the future."

[1] Another reviewer writes that "If it is the bomb which defines the twentieth century as at once dreadful and rewarding ... then the present book captures this range", and also praised the extensive bibliography.

It is historical journalism on a grand scale, with rich detail, colorful scenes, recreated conversations, vivid portraits, and gripping vignettes chronicling the lengthy scientific and political roads to Hiroshima, and briefly beyond".

Besides that, his review also contains criticism, as he writes that sometimes "narrative strategy ... neglects analysis, sometimes sacrifices the important to the vivid, and encourages an uncritical use of sources and possibly even skimpy archival research".

A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation or a Nobel Prize arrives as a virtual deus ex machina just when a scientist needs to study in Berlin or flee fascism - no hint is given that such awards might be something other than natural phenomena.

Even the Manhattan Project often seems more a matter of a physicist's views clashing with a soldier's, or a daring foray into the war zone to learn the status of German nuclear research, than the rapid construction and widespread operations of an enterprise that rivaled in size the prewar American automobile industry.

The Atlantic reported that "A generation of AI researchers treat Richard Rhodes's seminal book like a Bible as they develop technology with the potential to remake—or ruin—our world.

The Primer was a set of lectures given to new arrivals at the secret Los Alamos Laboratory during wartime to get them up to speed about the prominent questions needing to be solved in bomb design, and had been largely declassified in 1965, but was not widely available.