American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Paperback by Kai Bird

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American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Paperback by Kai Bird

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Product Details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (April 11 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 784 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375726268
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9780375726262
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 612 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.18 x 4.5 x 20.32 cm

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OPPENHEIMER • "A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”—Christopher Nolan

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative.

“A masterful account of Oppenheimer’s rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America’s own transformation. It is a tour de force.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer’s essential nature.... It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior.” —The New York Times


About Author

Kai Bird, a journalist and independent scholar, is the author of The Chairman: John J. McCloy & the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also a co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). Bird is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Writing Fellowship in Peace and International Relations, the Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship, and the German Marshall Fellowship.

Martin J. Sherwin is the Walter S. Dickson Professor of History at Tufts University, where he founded and directed the Nuclear Age History & Humanity Center. He is the author of A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (1975), which was the winner of the American History Book Prize and the Stewart Bernath Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Sherwin is the recipient of fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Author Residence: Washington, D.C and Boston


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