Rider of the Pale Horse

A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond

McAllister Hull and Amy Bianco

Narrated by John Chester

Available from Audible

Book published by University of New Mexico Press

A scientist’s recollection of his life as a junior member of the Manhattan Project, Rider of the Pale Horse recounts McAllister Hull’s involvement in various nuclear-related enterprises during and after World War II. Fresh from a summer job working with explosives in the chemistry department of an ordnance plant, Hull was drafted in 1943, after his freshman year in college. Unlike other accounts written by scientists and historians of that era, Hull’s narrative offers a realistic picture of the dangerous and messy job that GIs and civilian powdermen were asked to do. Hull’s description of his postwar work supporting the Bikini Atoll tests in the Pacific and the early concerns about the effects of a hydrogen bomb explosion illuminate the Dark Age of nuclear weaponry.

McAllister Hull (1923–2011) was a professor emeritus of physics at the University of New Mexico, where he served as provost in the early 1980s.

Amy Bianco is a science writer and editor in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

REVIEWS:

“A valuable contribution to our understanding of the development of the atomic age. Hull’s book reminds us that such momentous developments as the first atomic bomb were the work of real—but not average—individuals tinkering, experimenting, guessing, trying, failing, and succeeding.”

—New Mexico Historical Review

“Hull's story is an unexpectedly valuable addition to the often-told story of the Manhattan Project and the secret lab at Los Alamos.”

—Durango Herald

“An indispensable primary source for the study of one of the most remarkable events in the history of the American West.”

—Journal of Arizona History