Rider of the Pale Horse
Rider of the Pale Horse
A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond
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. John Hull’s illustrations show technicians and scientists at work and bring the story to life.
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 and a documentary film producer at Quarter Turn Media, which she cofounded. She has worked as a sponsoring editor for trade science at the McGraw-Hill Companies; a buyer for national science, nature, and medicine for Barnes & Noble; and an associate agent at John Brockman Associates (now Brockman, Inc.). During the course of her career she has acquired, edited, and/or published more than thirty-five books, and she is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. A native of Rochester, Minnesota, Bianco received her BA from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she now lives.
John Hull teaches in the College of Charleston Department of Studio Art in South Carolina.
