"American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert
Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant,
charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome
fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after
Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his
generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the
embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific
progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international
controls over atomic materials-an idea that is still relevant
today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and
criticized the Air Force's plans to fight an infinitely dangerous
nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early
1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive
nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission
chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing
board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's
nuclear secrets.
"American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimer's life and times in
revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is
based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in
America and abroad, on massive FBI files and on close to a hundred
interviews with Oppenheimer's friends, relatives and colleagues.
We follow him from his earliest education at the turn of the
twentieth century at New York City's Ethical Culture School,
through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then
to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the world's
mostaccomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he
established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of
theoretical physics, and where he became deeply involved with
social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were
communists. Then to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he transformed a
bleak mesa into the world's most potent nuclear weapons
laboratory-and where he himself was transformed. And finally, to
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed
from 1947 to 1966.
"American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at midcentury,
a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex
and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events-the
Depression, World War II and the Cold War. It is at once biography
and history, and essential to our understanding of our recent
past-and of our choices for the future.
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