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1.63k reviews for:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Martin J. Sherwin, Kai Bird
4.33 AVERAGE
1.63k reviews for:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Martin J. Sherwin, Kai Bird
4.33 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
One of my all-time favorite movies is The Hunt for Red October. I can never get over one of those opening scenes where the Red October’s political officer is reading from a book owned by ship captain Marko Raimius, played by Sean Connery. The officer reads the line “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” I still recall their exchange, with Connery doing his parts in his typical gravelly patrician tone:
Connery: It was said by an American.
PO: American?
Connery: Mmmhmm. He invented the atomic bomb and was later accused of being a communist.
I found that exchange fascinating because the Soviets were the baddies because of communism so why would a guy who did such a great thing in my childhood reasoning believe in what they believed?
Cultural conditioning is a helluva thing and I’m not going to act like my incuriosity was based solely on American exceptionalism. I could have looked under the rug a little more. Because now I’m looking at so many things and regretting much of it.
This book is about J Robert Oppenheimer and you’re probably reading it because of the development of the bomb. Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin do a good job of covering it in detail for the layperson. But the major themes of the book are…
Oppenheimer’s personal contradictions
His attempts to reconcile with the world post-Hiroshima
America’s domestic war on communism
Now the first one is covered well enough. Oppenheimer was a contradictory man. Too often, people who do heinous things in history get dismissed or understood as “complex.” Here, I think that complexity is important to grasp, how a man from a liberal ethical background could design something so objectively horrible.
As far as Oppenheimer’s post-Hiroshima road, there’s no one direction just as there is no one direction in the man’s life. Again, the writers do a great job of pulling Oppenheimer’s various moods together in the twenty years after the bomb dropped and the war ended.
But perhaps the overarching theme isn’t even science: it’s the American empire eating its own tail.
The United States certainly needed all hands on deck for the World War II effort but it took its best and brightest scientists and had them build something so destructive that the descendants of the original have the power to wipe life off the face of the earth. Meanwhile, before, during and after said war effort, it persecuted anyone who showed even remotely leftist views by assuming they were Soviet spies.
America’s post-recession anxiety was aided by the hoi polloi benefitting from the New Deal. But without question, capitalist merchants were looking at the communist uprising in Russia, along with a budding one in Germany and other places, and worried about what might happen on the home front. So they stoked panic. McCarthyism might be the most well known example; and its greasy tentacles certainly touched Oppenheimer. But it was there beforehand.
I truly wasn’t aware of the depth of the US’ domestic surveillance on its top atomic scientist. It’s horrifying to read, especially considering that for better and worse, Oppenheimer really did love his country.
This called to mind the biography I read last year on Joseph P. Kennedy: how the man’s life really was a panacea for a certain time in America. Oppenheimer’s is too, a time when we won the war abroad but took all the wrong lessons from it.
I don’t know that I came out of this feeling more or less sympathy for the man. Rather, I felt horrible for what the country asked of and did to the man, and what has happened now in a post-9/11 era. The planet melts. The fascists are on the rise. The nukes are still out there. It’s a feeling of real anxiety. Oppenheimer’s life embodied this.
An excellent biography.
Connery: It was said by an American.
PO: American?
Connery: Mmmhmm. He invented the atomic bomb and was later accused of being a communist.
I found that exchange fascinating because the Soviets were the baddies because of communism so why would a guy who did such a great thing in my childhood reasoning believe in what they believed?
Cultural conditioning is a helluva thing and I’m not going to act like my incuriosity was based solely on American exceptionalism. I could have looked under the rug a little more. Because now I’m looking at so many things and regretting much of it.
This book is about J Robert Oppenheimer and you’re probably reading it because of the development of the bomb. Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin do a good job of covering it in detail for the layperson. But the major themes of the book are…
Oppenheimer’s personal contradictions
His attempts to reconcile with the world post-Hiroshima
America’s domestic war on communism
Now the first one is covered well enough. Oppenheimer was a contradictory man. Too often, people who do heinous things in history get dismissed or understood as “complex.” Here, I think that complexity is important to grasp, how a man from a liberal ethical background could design something so objectively horrible.
As far as Oppenheimer’s post-Hiroshima road, there’s no one direction just as there is no one direction in the man’s life. Again, the writers do a great job of pulling Oppenheimer’s various moods together in the twenty years after the bomb dropped and the war ended.
But perhaps the overarching theme isn’t even science: it’s the American empire eating its own tail.
The United States certainly needed all hands on deck for the World War II effort but it took its best and brightest scientists and had them build something so destructive that the descendants of the original have the power to wipe life off the face of the earth. Meanwhile, before, during and after said war effort, it persecuted anyone who showed even remotely leftist views by assuming they were Soviet spies.
America’s post-recession anxiety was aided by the hoi polloi benefitting from the New Deal. But without question, capitalist merchants were looking at the communist uprising in Russia, along with a budding one in Germany and other places, and worried about what might happen on the home front. So they stoked panic. McCarthyism might be the most well known example; and its greasy tentacles certainly touched Oppenheimer. But it was there beforehand.
I truly wasn’t aware of the depth of the US’ domestic surveillance on its top atomic scientist. It’s horrifying to read, especially considering that for better and worse, Oppenheimer really did love his country.
This called to mind the biography I read last year on Joseph P. Kennedy: how the man’s life really was a panacea for a certain time in America. Oppenheimer’s is too, a time when we won the war abroad but took all the wrong lessons from it.
I don’t know that I came out of this feeling more or less sympathy for the man. Rather, I felt horrible for what the country asked of and did to the man, and what has happened now in a post-9/11 era. The planet melts. The fascists are on the rise. The nukes are still out there. It’s a feeling of real anxiety. Oppenheimer’s life embodied this.
An excellent biography.
Had to read it before the movie came out so I could be a snob and make comments in the theater
This book is fascinating but almost impossible to get through. There’s so many detours into things like his childhood rabi’s family’s origin every few pages. One of the best things about it is how dense and immersive it is, but it’s also what makes it so difficult to get through. Hope to pick it up again one day.
I’m glad I watched the movie first because it helped put faces (kinda) to the insane amount of people in this book.
Obviously this thing is a well researched beast. It does the thing all biographies do which is basically set it’s subject up as a hero which I expected. But I did learn a lot more about the country at the time and the beginnings of the government deciding they could spy on all of us at all times.
It was insightful and def the book to read if you wanna learn more about this person.
Obviously this thing is a well researched beast. It does the thing all biographies do which is basically set it’s subject up as a hero which I expected. But I did learn a lot more about the country at the time and the beginnings of the government deciding they could spy on all of us at all times.
It was insightful and def the book to read if you wanna learn more about this person.
Really incredible, fascinating, and devastating book. Can’t even put it into words how wonderfully crafted this was, I am absolutely beyond impressed at the writers ability to take this hugely complex life and create THIS out of it. The story was just so so fascinating and written so perfectly, it is so heartbreaking on so many levels and at the same time you just can not put it down because I just needed to know more about everything. I think this book actually changed the course of my life, I don’t know how yet but somehow I know it did. I literally ran my pink highlighter completely dry reading this because there was so much I felt an insatiable need to highlight because I needed to somehow mark that information because it should be kept as a part of my mind palace it was just all so amazing every bit of it I don’t even know what else to say.
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This is the best biography I’ve ever read. Cannot express how much I love it. Very inspiring.
I had a hard time getting through the last third of the book, in which they detail the minutiae of Oppenheimer’s hearings. Most people who enjoy courtroom dramas may enjoy it? I’m just not in that category.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
slow-paced