American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Dec 18, 2007 - Biography & Autobiography - 784 pages
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OPPENHEIMER • "A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”—Christopher Nolan

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 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.

“A masterful account of Oppenheimer’s rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America’s own transformation. It is a tour de force.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer’s essential nature.... It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior.” —The New York Times
 

Contents

Prologue
3
He Received Every New Idea as Perfectly Beautiful
9
His Separate Prison
29
Bohr Was God and Oppie Was His Prophet
268
The Impact of the Gadget on Civilization
277
Now Were All SonsofBitches
290
Those Poor Little People
313
People Could Destroy New York
336
PART FIVE
485
A Manifestation of Hysteria
523
A Black Mark on the Escutcheon of Our Country
538
It Was Really Like a NeverNeverLand
566
It Should Have Been Done the Day After Trinity
574
Theres Only One Robert
589
Notes
601
Oppie
612

Oppie Had a Rash and Is Now Immune
351
An Intellectual Hotel
369
He Couldnt Understand Why He Did It
391
He Never Let On What His Opinion Was
416
Dark Words About Oppie
431
Scientist X
454
The Beast in the Jungle
462
Frank Clipped It Out and Sent It
619
We Were Pulling the New Deal to the Left
626
Bibliography
685
Index
700
Hed Become Very Patriotic
704
Suicide Motive Unknown
714
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

KAI BIRD is the author of The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms. He coedited with Lawrence Lifschultz Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. A contributing editor of The Nation, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

MARTIN J. SHERWIN is the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, as well as the American History Book Prize. He and his wife live in Boston and Washington, D.C.

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