[adastra22]

"The Alchemy of Air" by Thomas Hager. This covers the discovery of fertilizer, its strategic implications (it was the oil of its day), the creation in Germany of the Haber-Bosch process for producing fertilizer and gunpowder precursors from air, and how it fueled two world wars. An incredible story that is not widely known these days.

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. This is an old one, but still a classic. The first half is like a scientific detective story about the discovery and development of quantum theory itself, in Germany and Denmark, and can be read by itself as an engaging history of physics. Then Hitler rises to power, we learn how most of the characters we've met so far escape to England and the USA, and the others except Bohr become part of the German nuclear project. It then becomes an engineering management history of the Manhattan project, and a fascinating look at the challenges they overcame. The final chapter is a sobering play by play description of what happened to the people of Hiroshima, and was hardest but necessary to read.