Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

ACTIVITY 1: “Role Play Interviews”

In this activity, students create questions to ask the book’s key figures, then role play with a partner in an interview.

If the book’s key figures visited an interview show, what questions would you want to ask them? How might they answer?

• Select a key figure from the text and pair up with a partner.
• Compose 2-3 questions to ask the key figure your role play partner chooses to represent. For example, you might choose to be Heisenberg and your partner Moe Berg. Your partner could ask you how you feel about working for Hitler, and you could ask your partner why they chose not to shoot Heisenberg.
• Take turns asking each other the questions. Answer the questions based on details from Bomb. Try to bring some of the figure’s personality traits to your delivery of the answers based on what you learned from the text.
• Once you and your partner have rehearsed the interviews, “replay” at least one of the questions for the class.

Teaching Suggestion: It may be beneficial to review a list of potential key figures for this activity and limit choices to strong possibilities. This activity is an especially good opportunity for students to reflect on the themes of Trust and Suspicion in Wartime and Pride and Guilt Among the Weapon Makers, as many of the figures Sheinkin depicts were conflicted in their allegiance and/or goals.

Differentiation Suggestion: Advanced reader-writers might turn this into a short story; visual learners could illustrate a moment during an interview between two figures, perhaps drawing in comic-book style with word balloons that contain figures’ quotes from the book.

ACTIVITY 2: “Old News”

In this activity, students locate old news reports on events from Bomb and compare them to the book’s account; they then consider how the passage of time has impacted the framing of these events.

Bomb depicts several dramatic events—the sabotage of the Norwegian power state, the deployment of the first A-bombs, the development of the first Soviet bombs, the arrest and trials of Soviet spies, the inquest into Oppenheimer’s loyalty, the Red Scare, etc.—that would have been major news items in their day.

• Find an old newspaper article or newsreel that reports on one of the above events.
• Locate the passage from Bomb where this event is mentioned and note the similarities and differences between the two accounts. Were some of the details of the event unclear at the time it occurred? If the facts themselves align with Sheinkin’s account, is the tone or interpretation different?
• Drawing on what you learned by comparing and contrasting the two accounts, write a paragraph discussing how and why the passage of time has influenced how we understand the event.

Teaching Suggestion: Before students begin, it may be helpful to briefly review research strategies, especially when looking for archival material. Afterwards, consider discussing students’ findings as a class. Because of both the secrecy and urgency of The Race to Build a Bomb, many details about the events Bomb depicts only became available after the fact, and potential ethical issues were put on the back burner; this activity can serve as a springboard for considering how our understanding of history changes over time.

Differentiation Suggestion: In comparing and contrasting the two accounts, visual learners may use a graphic organizer like a Venn diagram or T-chart. The end product can be adapted in various ways; auditory learners, for example, may find it easier to give an oral presentation than a written response.