This is a formidable intellectual achievement, and the author of the article, David Samuels, emphasizes this fact. On the surface, it is the story of John Coster-Mullen, a 61-year-old 'truck driver' from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who, through years of painstaking effort, has succeeded better than the ostensible experts have in constructing a precise model of the weapon that annihilated Hiroshima.
'Atomic John,' an intriguing article that appeared in the New Yorker on December 15, 2008, is particularly remarkable for what it reveals about the inability of some Americans to confront the consequences of the U.S.
