American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Book Review: Do you remember when Gulliver woke on the beach bound and helpless?
Summary: 5 Stars
Just imagine, an American kid, rich for the times, with a saintly brother, the mind of a polymath, and a knack for atomic physics. Sounds like trouble? It wouldn't have been if he had proceeded down the Nobelist path making his name a household word in thirty other academic households. Fortune would have it that he be associated with an Army General from the Corps of Engineers who had just constructed the Pentagon. This unlikely pair were charged with creating a nuclear bomb. (Thank God Hitler didn't couple Klaus Werner Heisenberg with Albert Speer giving the Germans a bomb in 1941) Oppenheimer and Groves got together the world's best talent in a pasture in New Mexico and with branches all over the place and made the bomb. It worked!
What a nice story. One would hope that Oppenheimer would find a sinecure and while away the rest of his life teaching, further extending his education, and becoming a scientist statesman. An immortal victory.
But there was a problem. In the thirties both brothers had feelings about social justice for the working class in California. Neither of them seriously considered armed overthrow of the government, direct action, sabotage or traitorous conspiracies. They were simply parlor pink in the midst of the depression. Sadly, J. Edgar Hoover (in addition to his other activities with the ubiquitous Clyde) took on the issue of spying on American citizens whom he thought were security risks. Worse still, Oppenheimer's wife had lost a previous husband in the Spanish Civil War and both she and he had been dues paying members of the Communist Party. Since Hoover's illegal spying efforts were in no way conclusive, he bided his time. After the war, the government was replete with advisory groups divided between the grossly incompetent political favorites and a minority of real experts. The age of Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn. One of the Republican forms was a financial type far better known as a fund raiser than a nuclear physicist. Lewis Strauss, a close friend of the advertising executive (Lasker) who named Kotex and Kleenex. Strauss developed a real hate for Oppenheimer and set out to destroy him by removing all of his security clearances.
Strauss was remarkable in that he never finished college or university but convinced Eisenhower he would be a good member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Oppenheimer, Director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, looked on this insult to him as a deeply personal wound that never healed. Strauss was later rejected as Secretary of Commerce in part because of his own little scandals and in part because of the injustice delt to J. Robert.
This story would be sad and humiliating to any American Scientist. Coming as it does, in the midst of an administration so studiously ignorant of personal justice with abundant evidence that it could be repeated at any time will not inhibit the courage and steadfastness that scientists must also have.
Book Review: How the bomb got built here first
Summary: 5 Stars
My father spent most of his career in nuclear engineering researching the mathematics of nuclear reactors at Brookhaven. My father had visited all the national labs and got to know all the key players in nuclear physics in the period from 1950-1970. Growing up in that environment I naturally knew a bit about Oppenheimer and Teller and others. It was clear to me that my father had sympathy for Oppenheimer and a great deal of respect. teller was viewed more as a politician looking for fame and publicity. This became even more apparent tto me when in the 1980s I saw how he lobbied the Reagan administration for research on laser based strategic defense satellites.
This book is an account of Oppenheimer's life from childhood through the Manhattan Project with emphasis on the most crucial part of his career as the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory where physicists mathematicians and chemists teamed up to develop the first nuclear weapons that were used against Japan. Oppenheimer was a reserved man who did not seek the limelight. He was brilliant but his biggest asset was his management and leadership capabilities along with very good judgement, something that Teller seemed to lack. It was just the qualities of leadership that led to the succcessful development of the atomic bomb in a few short years at Los Alamos. His liberal past and pre-war affiliation with communism caused him great difficulties and some in the military feared that he was a security risk. He was continually being checked out bt J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Hoover did not like the appointment of Oppenheimer to the key leadership position at Los Alamos.
After the war was over, strangely the man who was able to keep secrets during the crucial period of the Manhattan Projected was not trusted after the war. He lost security clearance and struggled due to the increased fear of communism from the post-war Sovuet Union including the wave of witchhunting during the Joseph McCarthy era. He was liberal and his pre-war past communist associations hurt him deeply. His philosophy on nuclear weapons and his clashes with his former colleague Joseph Teller made far a tormented post-war career. I believe Oppenheomer felt guilt over his involvement in the development of the bomb and was definitely against the arms race. This period of his life as well as his childhood was important to understand the complexities of this man. The authors do a good job of covering this and do not fall into the trap of just emphasizing the war years.
This book is engaging and very successful at portraying the life character and personality of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was the right man for a difficult and challenging job and had what it took to get the most out of an odd group of geniuses.
Book Review: Liked it but feel I need to read another version ...
Summary: 4 Stars
Great read. Well-written account of the man's life and the times. Obviously, one flaw with biographies is any author's infatuation with the subject. I can see as one delves into the life of such a complex and incredible person one begins to sympathize and care of the subject. Whether it is ,this, or the author's are simply very Left my only problem with the book is obvious distaste the authors have for the Right and that tends to cheapen their work. Now, I feel I need to find another account of his life in order to balance out the perspective and then draw my own conclusions. Book Review: All you need to know about Oppenheimer...
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a quite comprehensive look at his life and took me a while to get through. But it was worth the time I invested to learn about this fascinating American. The impact he had on science obviously is huge, but I didn't realize what an interesting person he was beyond the science.
The political aspects of the story are quite interesting, we don't see too many people in the science community today garnering national attention on the scale that Oppie did in his time. And his skills/passion for the outdoors was a bit of a surprise as well.
Despite a few slow spots, I liked the book a lot and certainly recommend it. The pictures were also a very nice touch.
Book Review: history through the life of a man
Summary: 5 Stars
aside from the fascinating and most disturbingly profound manifestations of human accomplishment and cruelty surrounding WWII, the one aspect of the bomb project that i've never considered much until having read this book is how theoretical physics, in the form of pure mathematics, notions dreamt up in the realm of philosophy, was able to so directly and so completely impact the material existence of the world. it was really only in a span of a few years of intense work, with less than two decades since theoretical physics entered the academic mainstream, that a group of men driven so intensely by the urgency to overcome evil was able to create this small thing that has the potential to destroy the world and change it forever ... and the irony is that those scientists believed it would end all war! when i got to the part when they tested the bomb ... i can't even imagine ... but what pride and awe must have swelled inside each person involved ... and at the same time i was just absolutely aghast because the thing came into existence and would be the source of terror so many years since. this book is a real portal through history along the life of one of its major characters, but also represents the genius, passion, fear, ambition, and painful tragedy that drives mans desire to make a difference in the world.