American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative.Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In American Prometheus, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin delve deep into J. Robert Oppenheimer's life and deliver a thorough and devastatingly sad biography of the man whose very name has come to represent the culmination of 20th century physics and the irrevocable soiling of science by governments eager to exploit its products. Rich in historical detail and personal narratives, the book paints a picture of Oppenheimer as both a controlling force and victim of the mechanisms of power.
By the time the story reaches Oppenheimer's fateful Manhattan Project work, readers have been swept along much as the project's young physicists were by fate and enormous pressure. The authors allow the scientists to speak for themselves about their reactions to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, avoiding any sort of preacherly tone while revealing the utter, horrible ambiguity of the situation. For instance, Oppenheimer wrote in a letter to a friend, "The thing had to be done," then, "Circumstances are heavy with misgiving."
Many biographies of Oppenheimer end here, with the seeds of his later pacifism sown and the dangers of mixing science with politics clearly outlined. But Bird and Sherwin devote the second half of this hefty book to what happened to Oppenheimer after the bomb. For a short time, he was lionized as the ultimate patriot by a victorious nation, but things soured as the Cold War crept forward and anti-communist witchhunts focused paranoia and anti-Semitism onto Oppenheimer, destroying his career and disillusioning him about his life's work. Devastated by the atom bomb's legacy of fear, he became a vocal and passionate opponent of the Strangelovian madness that gripped the world because of the weapons he helped develop.
Twenty-five years of research went into creating American Prometheus, and there has never been a more honest and complete biography of this tragic scientific giant. The many great ironies of Oppenheimer's life are revealed through the careful reconstruction of a wealth of records, conversations, and ideas, leaving the clearest picture yet of his life. --Therese Littleton
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Though many recognize Oppenheimer (1904–1967) as the father of the atomic bomb, few are as familiar with his career before and after Los Alamos. Sherwin (A World Destroyed) has spent 25 years researching every facet of Oppenheimer's life, from his childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side and his prewar years as a Berkeley physicist to his public humiliation when he was branded a security risk at the height of anticommunist hysteria in 1954. Teaming up with Bird, an acclaimed Cold War historian (The Color of Truth), Sherwin examines the evidence surrounding Oppenheimer's "hazy and vague" connections to the Communist Party in the 1930s—loose interactions consistent with the activities of contemporary progressives. But those politics, in combination with Oppenheimer's abrasive personality, were enough for conservatives, from fellow scientist Edward Teller to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to work at destroying Oppenheimer's postwar reputation and prevent him from swaying public opinion against the development of a hydrogen bomb. Bird and Sherwin identify Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss as the ringleader of a "conspiracy" that culminated in a security clearance hearing designed as a "show trial." Strauss's tactics included illegal wiretaps of Oppenheimer's attorney; those transcripts and other government documents are invaluable in debunking the charges against Oppenheimer. The political drama is enhanced by the close attention to Oppenheimer's personal life, and Bird and Sherwin do not conceal their occasional frustration with his arrogant stonewalling and panicky blunders, even as they shed light on the psychological roots for those failures, restoring human complexity to a man who had been both elevated and demonized. 32 pages of photos not seen by PW. (Apr. 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb, was lauded as a patriot after the United States dropped the bomb on Japan, but nine years later he was disgraced, accused of Communist sympathies and "substantial defects of character." This commanding biography, the result of twenty-five years of research, reëvaluates that character, and delivers the most complex portrait of Oppenheimer to date: a brilliant but insecure child prodigy who became a charismatic leader; a polymath who learned Sanskrit just so he could read the Bhagavad Gita; an aesthete who mixed infamously strong Martinis; a one-time fellow-traveller who was almost willfully naïve about politics. Drawing on thousands of pages of F.B.I. surveillance records, the authors contend that the scientist was never a member of the Communist Party.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
Customer Reviews
Superb biography
For all the reasons other reviewers have praised this biography, I do too. Timely (acutely so) when it was first published, it is no less timely today. There is so much in the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer -- his personal story and the story of his times -- that resonates now. AP should be required reading in high school American history courses, lest, as the saying goes, those unaware of history doom themselves -- and us all -- to repeat it. In addition to being a highly sobering and informative read, AP is also vivid and facinating in the telling. Though AP may not be the last word on Oppenheimer, it's hard to imagine it will be surpassed. A first-rate book.
The rise and fall of the physicist who helped create the Atomic Bomb
Subtitled "The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer", this 2005 book won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. This fascinating story of the physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb is meticulously researched by the authors and offers the reader a comprehensive look at the facts and the political complexities that first held this man in high esteem in 1945 and later turned on him and disgraced him just nine years later in 1954.
Born in 1904 to a Jewish family who had been one of the founders of the Ethical Culture movement in the America, young Robert attended a private Ethical Culture school and grew up inspired by the ideal that the supreme aim of our lives is to create a more humane society. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Cambridge in England and the University of Gottingen in Germany, later becoming a professor at the University of Berkeley in California. This was in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Europe was where the innovations in physics were happening, Hitler was rising to power, Russia was in a state of revolution, the Spanish Civil War was beginning and the work of Karl Marx was being discussed by the segment of American society that believed in making the world a better place. Naturally, Robert Oppenheimer found himself in that world, and contributed money to some humanitarian causes. During this time he had several romances and eventually married a woman whose former husband was a Communist who had died fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Robert was a brilliant physicist and was chosen to run the project at Los Alamos to create what turned out to be the Atomic Bomb. In this section of the book we meet the other scientists involved in the project and get to understand the kind of isolationist lives they and their families lived during the two years that the project was being developed. Later, when the Atomic Bomb became a reality, there was debate over whether or not it should be used. Originally, it was designed to be used in Europe, but Hitler had already surrendered and Japan was on the verge of surrendering. There were no military targets left that the bomb was suited for. All it would do would be to kill thousands of civilians and wreck havoc in Japan. Some thought at the time that all that would be needed was to call a press conference and do a test in an isolated area so that reporters could report on its strength which might have been enough to push Japan's surrender. This, however, was not to be.
Well, we all know what happened. Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Japan surrendered. And Robert Oppenheimer was lauded as one of the greatest scientists of all time.
Things changed however. Atomic power seemed to let the genie out of the bottle. The arms race began with the Soviet Union exploding a bomb of its own and the United States wanting to develop even bigger and bigger bombs. All of a sudden, it seemed as if there would be no end - that the bombs would just get bigger and bigger and the world would blow itself into destruction. Robert Oppenheimer opposed this trend and wrote many articles warning the world of this course of action. Some saw him as un-American and wanted to destroy him. Eventually, in 1954, there was a hearing which would eventually strip him of his top secret security clearance. It was an unfair, kangaroo court which made me cringe as I read the transcripts. How awful for him.
After that, Robert was never the same. A few years later, at the age of 62, he died of throat cancer.
I looked up the myth of Prometheus so that I could better understand the title. In Greek Mythology, Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals to use. Zeus then punished him by having him bound to a rock while an eagle ate his liver, only to have it grow back the next day.
This is a fine book. I learned a lot. It is not the kind of book to read in one big gulp though. I read it little by little, a page or two at a time. And during the period I was reading it I was right there in those long-ago years, living and breathing all the influences of the times and understanding the world around me just a little bit better.
Incredible
What a powerful book. Beautifully written. Oppenheimer was a near-mythical figure and suffered a tragedy that was undeserved and spiteful. A must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of this man and the times in which he lived.
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