51¶¯Âþ

Critical Mass is an excellent demonstration of the strength and weakness of
history CD-ROMs (Corbis, Washington, £49.99, ISBN 1 886802 02 5, Fax: +1
(206) 746 1618). It tells the story of the A-bomb project from dozens of angles:
you can visit Los Alamos in 1944, peruse complete biographies of Robert
Oppenheimer and Klaus Fuchs or catch up on the background physics, with animated
fission. Some of the features, like video segments with Manhattan Project
veterans speaking or the clickable periodic table, just could not be found in a
book. But there is no overall narrative thread, and the politics are
soft-pedalled throughout.