The terrifying first use of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was the most controversial act of war in history, dramatically ending World War II while simultaneously ushering in the age of mass destruction. However, it was also the culmination of a story that extends beyond Japan and Washington: the completion of decades of scientific achievements and centuries of colonial exploitation. "Snake Dance" is the narrative of a journey that turned into a quest for how humanity reached this point. Patrick Marnham travels from the 19th-century luxurious palaces of Belgium's King Leopold II, built with wealth looted from the Congo, to the mortally ruined nuclear plant of modern Kinshasa. He follows the mission of uranium from the Congo to the New Mexico desert for the secret testing of the Manhattan Project. Here he discovers the legacies of Robert Oppenheimer and Aby Warburg, two "demented parents" who faced the deadly power of 20th-century science in very different ways. Both traveled to New Mexico. Oppenheimer was celebrated for building a bomb, the ancestor of weapons that have enslaved humanity. Warburg, condemned to obscurity and confined to a psychiatric hospital, regained his mental health by studying the customs of the indigenous Americans of the Southwest, who, for thousands of years, have practiced the custom of the "snake dance" trying to harness the power of lightning. The circuit closes in Japan. Faced with the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, the scientific man, like the snake dancers, is confronted with a power beyond his control. Spanning three continents and the history of civilization, "Snake Dance" is simultaneously a daring intellectual adventure and a warning to humanity.