ATOMIC FRAGMENTS: A Daughter's Questions, by Mary Palevsky. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 272 pp., $24.95 (cloth).

With the benefit of hindsight and a distant or nonexistent memory of World War II, we pass moral judgment on those who were directly involved with the invention and construction of the atomic bomb with relative ease. We voice opinions about whether or not the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified and freely debate the pros and cons of weapons of mass destruction as a means of achieving "peace."

We don't often stop to put ourselves in the position of those scientists who actually were responsible for making and testing the first atomic bomb or consider how they might feel today about the weapon they created.

In "Atomic Fragments," Mary Palevsky interviews some of the most prominent scientists involved in the Manhattan Project -- Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Joseph Rotblat, Herbert York, Philip Morrison, Robert Wilson and philosopher David Hawkins.