American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer(美国的普罗米修斯)

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Bookmarks Magazine The story of the Manhattan Project has been told so often that this biography appropriately concentrates on Oppenheimer’s formative years and the aftermath of his work, rather than on the scientific achievement itself. Nobody disputes the authors’ thoroughness or their nuanced understanding of their subject’s personality and beliefs. If anything, the research is so detailed that the narrative sometimes drags. With two more biographies of Oppenheimer due out soon, it is premature to call American Prometheus the definitive work on the father of the atomic bomb. Critics agree, however, that the book’s scope transcends the usual bounds of biography and illuminates a critical time in American history, with important implications for our present and future.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From AudioFile J. Robert Oppenheimer used his brilliant mind to organize and build the first atomic bomb. At war's end he faced a harder battle--suffering the '50s pogroms of Senator Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover for his and his wife's ties with the Communist Party. Oppy's life brought him into the spheres of the great intellectuals and politicos of the time. Although Jeff Cummings moves briskly, his phonetics never soften. Cummings faces a prodigious text with more facts, quotes, and testimony than fuzzy stories. He could have used theater voices for the rapid-fire Senate interrogations, but the tempo and detachment he assumes fit the task. He uses an unstudied gringo accent for the occasional Spanish names and words. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This……