American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

A fantastically, well-researched book about Robert Oppenheimer that gives a great insight into his character.

This is the first complete account of the life of Oppenheimer, the bomb, the nature of his genius and the failure of those in control to understand his deeper moral insight. Right now, the same test faces the millions of Americans: half of whom believe Trump's idiotic beliefs without a scrap of evidence. Why? Because of a defective education system. It does not produce people who are able to see through the lies told by vested interests. This book is riveting. We get a very clear idea of Oppie, the immense power of mind he had which even developed fresh gifts under the pressure to build the bomb before the Nazis. His gift of handling everybody he dealt with: astonishing this is. The stupidity of those in control, like Eisenhower. The US military are not equipped. When did they ever not mess up? The two authors have given a very precise account of everything that matters, maybe too much at times, for we do not need it all. Alas, the 700 pp of the paperback are printed so close to the spine that it spoils the read. It cannot be read. See pp 64,66. William W.C. Scott

A good in depth look into the drivers, ethics and motivations for building and using the A bomb. The tragedy of the death and destruction brought on by use of the Atomic bomb is assessed both from those morally against and those excited by what it meant as a weapon to dominate others and the initiation of the inexorable journey of humanity towards its own extinction.

One of best documentary- biography book of our time and the most vital issues of our world today, nuclear weapons and very real danger of nuclear war. The book also nicely pictures the society, both the Jewish community ofvthe time in US, which is totally different than today, and scientific community, as well as the horror of Mccarthism in US, which strongly resembles some of the trends which we see today. The book is excellently written and must read for all of us.

Brilliant book which provided a fascinating insight into the world of Oppenheimer and the development of the atomic bomb.

Very well written about Oppenheimer and his not good with women. He was able to understand language in two months. An amazing intellectual. He didn't quite understand the ends how nuclear bombs were used and deterrence. He loved New Mexico and hated Washington. Bird understands the politics of leftish in 1930s. Oppenheimer understood the disaster in Russia and Nazism where he half understood what was happening to many of their family in Germany. However he spend so much of the disasters of Spanish Civil War with his university leftish friends. Oppenheimer never understood politics and this that destroyed his life. Of course he created Los Alamos but without the doughty Groves who also created the life. Bird is a leftish analyst and a good family. Without Eisenhower and his cronies could have the wasteful and dangerous the nuke policy of the 1950s? I don"t think so. Noland had for ten years ago for the book.The book is truthful and tragic like Oppenheimer. His book is important for our lives and my mine

No doubt, like me, many of you reading this will be looking at this due to the Oppenheimer film, which got most of its information from this. Is it worth the read? Yes, but it isn't an easy one. God knows how much work and effort went into making this account. It is heavy yet fascinating reading, especially about the father of the nuclear bomb. It is in many ways a telling of his entire life story. Well written. Would very much recommend this.

Arguably the ‘tell’ in this admirable and epic inquiry into the enigma that was Robert Oppenheimer comes early. “My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things”, he reminisces, and his sheltered home life offered him “no healthy way to be a bastard." If only the boy ‘Oppie' had got more dirt under his finger nails and learned to be that ‘bastard’! Then he might have foreseen the high probability that his delivery of the first atomic bomb would open a Pandora’s Box to the scary but so far futile nuclear arms race we’ve survived these last near 80 years. And then he might have been prepared for, or at least grown a thicker skin against the character assassination that almost tarnished his entire reputation. For no less brilliant Los Alamos amigos like John Von Neumann and Edward Teller ‘got it’. The former partly by applying his game theory to global politics; the latter, well, because he appears to have been pretty much a ‘bastard’. Charitably, it appears Oppie’s real world naivety might be excused in two ways. First, he was as much a man of theory not practice in physics (the opposite of his nemesis Ernest Lawrence) as he was in politics (admiring the ideals of communism despite the mounting evidence of despicable practice in the USSR he can hardly have not known about). He was, if you like, the apocryphal ‘absent minded professor’ (so long as you forget that almost everyone who knew him, including his enemies, rated him as a polymath unique in science). Second, because the boy blinkered by that ‘sheltered home life’ grew into the Brahmin floating above the grubby concerns of mere mortals. There’s a long quote near the end from an essay published about a year after his security ‘trial’ which exposes this other-worldliness, or patronising default position. It’s about “the problem about doing justice to the implicit, the imponderable, and the unknown” in politics and science. Oppenhiemer claims “the means by which it is solved is sometimes called style.” It’s style, he argues, that “makes it possible to act effectively, but not absolutely…it is style which is the deference that action pays to uncertainty; it is above all style through which power defers to reason.” Replace ‘style’ with ‘class’ and I think you’d be nearer the essence of Oppenheimer. Since ‘Oppenheimer: American Prometheus’ was first published in 2005 fears of existential threat have come to dominate our lives perhaps more thoroughly than even the Russian atomic menace during the Cold War. Whether it’s terrorism, distant climate apocalypse, epidemics, the common thread in the response of policy and elites to these ‘unknowns’ has been the so-called ‘precautionary principle’. Ie that attempted prevention at almost any cost is justified. Strange then, from today’s vantage point, how someone as visionary as Oppenheimer never once, it appears, was troubled by the risk that ‘doing nothing’ while the Soviets (in all likelihood) built up their atomic cache might be fatal, literally. And again with hindsight, you might ask whether the McCarthy ‘witch hunts’ of the 1950s, which claimed Oppenheimer as trophy-sized collateral damage, have anything on the cancelling today of anyone evincing a view of history, sociology, the arts, even science which does not adhere to the single acceptable narrative. In his summation, Oppenheimer’s lawyer Garrison might have been surveying the current censorious orthodoxy: the security apparatus was now behaving “like some monolithic kind of machine that will result in the destruction of men of great gifts…America must not devour her own children.” Perhaps it’s this time bomb we have most to fear?

In every 4-5 pages, one page comes out, not even glued to binding. I thought it is a temporary fault which will be ok further but no, the whole book is flawed.

This book is a must-read and was the basis for the Oppenheimer film. It explains the physics in accessible terms without talking down. It explains the technical and management challenges of the programme which today remains a unique case of mastering both under pressure. It spends less effort on the ethical dilemmas for the physicists and it missed out on a famous quotation "We knew sin, not for the work we did, but for the enjoyment it generated" (rough quotation from memory). For those who know it well and for those who don't it should be part of our culture to read it.

Bellissimo libro, molto dettagliato, ripercorre la vita di un grande personaggio fornendo un background chiaro della sia formazione sin da bambino, permettendo di capirne la personalità e i conflitti interni

# American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. # Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer. It's a kind of backward integration for me. I first watched the film Oppenheimer last year and that led me to the book. The movie is an adaptation of this book. The book gives granular details of what was shown in the film but the focus was more on the Manhattan Project. Obviously it's difficult to scope in all that is there in the book in about 3 hours. Considered as the Father of Atom bomb, Oppenheimer fell in the wrong books of President Truman as he opposed deploying atom bomb on Japan. The purpose of the bomb was to destroy Germany. But by the time it was ready, Germany surrendered and Hitler had committed suicide. Oppenheimer was against using it against Japan which was already defeated and ready to surrender. But Truman was determined to show America's might and strength. And there began the problems for Oppenheimer. Subsequently he also opposed the development of the Hydrogen bomb. And the witch hunt begins. Oppenheimer once was a member of the Communist Party but now had completely severed his links but that was enough for the Republican governments to indict and crucify Oppenheimer. He was stripped of all Government positions and security clearances withdrawn. He was holding a key position at Princeton University. US wanted to strip that as well but the scientific community led by Einstein protested strongly and the Government was unsuccessful. Oppenheimer's image was resurrected after the Democrat John F Kennedy was elected US President. Sadly even after Oppenheimer's death, his children continued to suffer. His son didn't use his second name to eke out living doing menial jobs and his daughter committed suicide as she could not secure jobs as security clearances were denied to her. It made for sad reading towards the end. An excellent book provided one has patience to read a 700 page tome in small size print. 5/5.

Very nice book