The Bomb | Didier Alcante, Laurent-Frédéric Bollee

The incredible true story of the most horrific weapon ever created.

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb ravaged Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people are instantly pulverized. And the whole world discovered, horrified, the existence of the atomic bomb, the first weapon of mass destruction. But in what context, how and by whom could this instrument of death be developed?

A veritable saga of 450 pages, this graphic novel tells the story behind the scenes and the key characters of this historic event which, in 2020, commemorates its 75th anniversary. From the uranium mines of Katanga to Japan, via Germany, Norway, the USSR and New Mexico, a succession of incredible but true facts took place.

All of these are told here from the point of view of men: whether they are political decision-makers (Roosevelt, Truman), scientists who have gone down in history (Einstein, Oppenheimer, Fermi, etc.) or major players who have remained unknown, such as Leó Szilàrd (the main character of this album, a scientist who moved heaven and earth so that the USA could develop the bomb, then did the impossible so that it would never use it), Ebb Cade (an African-American worker who was unknowingly injected with plutonium to study its effect on health) or Leslie Groves (the general who ruled the Manhattan Project with an iron fist) – not to mention, of course, the people and the city of Hiroshima, authentically recreated in The Bomb.

Extremely well documented but above all fascinating, comparable in this respect to the TV series Chernobyl, this book is already establishing itself as the reference book on the history of the atomic bomb.