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James B. Conant - Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Paperback)
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James B. Conant - Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Paperback)
Series: Stanford Nuclear Age Series
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In 1970, organic chemist, Harvard president, and nuclear-weapons
mandarin Conant published a ponderous and unrevealing
autobiography, My Several Lives. Now, in an even more massive but
engrossing look at Conant's public life, Hershberg (a historian at
the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.) illuminates the
importance of this enigmatic and undeservedly obscure figure.
Because of the magnitude of his undertaking, as well as the secrecy
maintained by both Harvard and the US government over many relevant
files, Hershberg has concentrated on Conant's careers as "atomic
bomb administrator, nuclear and scientific adviser to the
government, Harvard president during the 'Red Scare,' Cold War
public figure, and envoy to Germany." Nonetheless, Hershberg
relates the story of child prodigy Conant's upbringing in a Boston
suburb, his rise to academic excellence at Harvard, and his
profitable work in the "chemist's war" of WW I - where he "threw
himself into the task of producing poison gases, confronting for
the first time the moral quandaries involved in a scientist's
participation in constructing deadly weapons rather than advancing
knowledge." After the war, Conant became equally absorbed in his
groundbreaking chemical research at Harvard, until, in 1933, he was
appointed the university's president - a posting that prompted him
to pursue a liberal policy, reforming tenure procedures and making
the school more democratic and less hidebound. In 1941, Conant
joined a group of scholars studying the question of whether to
develop a nuclear weapon, and he played a key role in the Manhattan
Project. Until the early 1950's, he constantly advised the feds on
nuclear policy - especially on attempts to control the
proliferation of nuclear weapons - and he campaigned against the
development of the hydrogen bomb. Later, Conant presided over
Germany's rearmament and became America's first ambassador to West
Germany. Finally, in 1957, at age 65, he commenced a new career as
"author, commentator, and critic on American public education."
Conant died in 1978. A magisterial study of an awesome and
intriguing public career. (Kirkus Reviews)
James B. Conant (1893-1978) was one of the giants of the American
establishment in the twentieth century. President of Harvard
University from 1933 to 1953, he was also a scientist who led the
US government's effort to develop weapons of mass destruction, and
his story mirrors the transition of the United States from
isolationism to global superpower at the dawn of the nuclear age.
'This splendid portrait of Conant ...illuminates the life of a
pivotal figure in the making of US nuclear, scientific,
educational, and foreign policy for almost half a century. But the
book is much more: it is not only an insightful narration of
Conant's life, it is also a brilliant and important account of the
making of the nuclear age, a chronicle that contains much that is
new.' TheWashington Post 'The bomb would be as much Conant's as it
was anyone's in government. His inner response to that burden of
responsibility has long been obscured, but it is illumined here
...This is a model of historiography that is evocative reading.'
The New York Times Book Review 'Vibrantly written and compelling,
it breaches Conant's shield of public discretion in masterly
fashion ...It is a huge, ambitious work - a history of the Cold War
as Conant encountered it as well as a study of the man. ' The New
Yorker 'Magnificent ...Any reader interested in nuclear weapons,
Cold War history, or American politics from FDR to JFK will find
this biography riveting.'
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