Recently I was planning on read William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but when I looked into it there has been alot criticism of that book since it was published, and in looking at that discussion I discovered Richard J. Evans Third Reich trillogy, which was absolutely incredible. So now that I'm thinking about re reading Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and/or Dark Sun, I was looking around to see, what is the general opinion of these books is among historians, are there any particularly flawed parts, and are there more modern works that take different stances than he does that I should look into?
Rhodes' books are viewed favorably, though they are now a bit old and they have their narrative quirks. The first book is still assigned in undergraduate classes all the time. The main criticisms of it today is that a lot has been done on the history of the atomic bomb since 1986, so there are a lot of things that would be considered "missing" by modern standards. The only major things people think are "wrong" with it is that its focus is almost exclusively about individual scientists having individual ideas and making them into realities — today we would put more of an emphasis on the non-epistemic aspects (e.g., the organizational aspects). Also it is super long — depending on what you want, it is either waaay more backstory or just right (but warning, they don't discover nuclear fission until 50% through the book, and it is a long book).
Dark Sun is very ambitious especially for its time — covering the H-bomb program and the Soviet bomb program, written right at the end of the Cold War. It's not quite as great as the first book but it's still readable.
Other books I find useful to read/recommend/assign:
Herken's The Brotherhood of the Bomb adds a lot to the A-bomb/H-bomb story
Gordin's Red Cloud at Dawn is better on the Soviet program and role of espionage
Schlosser's Command and Control gets you into some of the later Cold War period and is still readable
Reed's The History and Science of the Manhattan Project is not as readable but is a much more diverse coverage of topics than the Rhodes books (he is very attentive to the bureaucratic and technological side of things)
And books like Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy integrate more "up to date" historiography on the end of the war and the use of the bombs, as well as the Soviet and Japanese sides of the story
But Rhodes' books are still good. No book can do (or should try to do) everything. I still make students read it, and then add extra information/new information on top of it.