num_pages: 666
description: This second volume of Mr. Lilienthal's journals covers the stormy period of America's atomic weapons monopoly, of spy scares and Congressional investigations, of a secret struggle between civilian and military leadership within the government, and finally, of he gravest of issues - the decision to make the H-bomb. Beginning the day after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and ending in 1950 when Mr. Lilienthal retired as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, these journals record his part in decision-making on disarmament, on the relation of the military to scientific development, and on secrecy in government. The decisions taken in those years still affect us, and any future account of the period will come to depend in large part on this record. The journals as a whole will ultimately record some forty-six years in Mr. Lilienthal's career in public and private life. Commenting on the project, Jonathan Daniels says, "This is one of the great journals of our time - and our history. I can think of nothing quite comparable with it in the American story. Here is not only the intimate diary of one of the most creative public servants of our time⁠—also the significance of the actor is matched by his perception and his prose. Certainly David Lilenthal's place in the development of man's powers in both the TVA and the Atomic Energy Commission gave him unequalled opportunity to record not only the story of his own public life but the drama of man in his time. But much of the value of this journal is that it was not shaped in solemnity for historians but written as the day-by-day record of the life of a man whose interests included birdsong, his boy's problems, the books he read and the music he heard, as well as the conflicts of bureaucracy and the problem of the bomb."
language: English
title: The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. 2: The Atomic Energy Years 1945-1950
publisher: Harper & Row