Steve Sheinkin: Hi, this is Steve Sheinkin, and I'm the author of Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon. I'm going to tell you a bit about how I came to write the book, and then I'll read an excerpt to you.

Three or four years ago, I started reading books about the race to make the atomic bomb and the spies involved in stealing it. What really drew me in was this guy, Ted Hall, who was a teenage scientist. He graduated Harvard at 18 and went directly to Los Alamos and became a spy. I started with his story, and then from there, read literally a mountain of books about scientists, spies, commandos, this cast of characters of thousands that no novelist could invent. So it was really fun reading, but I had to cut myself off and say "Alright, now it's time to try to organize all of this into a thriller." Kind of a page-turning, non-fiction story. To me, that's my idea of a fun challenge, actually. The way some people like crosswords. I love taking this mountain of material, all these books and dozens of characters and storylines, and somehow trying to organize it into a cinematic- style thriller.

So I'll read you a very short excerpt from the book about the making of a very unusual and unlikely spy named Harry Gold.

"Just about the last person anyone would expect to be involved in the race to build the atomic bomb was Harry Gold. When World War II began, Gold was a 28 year old chemist living with his parents and younger brother in a working class Philadelphia neighborhood. He stood five foot six, with thick black hair, and a soft round face. Friends described him as shy, smart, and always ready to help anyone who asked. He was the kind of guy who seemed to blend in with the background, who could come and go from a room without being noticed. 'You'd never in a million years believe this guy was a spy,' one neighbor later said. And yet, Harry Gold was about to become a major player in what FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, would call the crime of the century."