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

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***SOON TO BE A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD FILM DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN***
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NONFICTION


'Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying' - Sunday Times


Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics,J. Robert Oppenheimer - director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - was themost famous scientist of his generation. In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird andMartin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundlyinvolved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.

Reviews

'Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying by turns... No more absorbing biography will, Ipredict, come out this year, nor, given the dangers we face, a more important one.' - John Carey,Sunday Times

'Fascinating... Enthralling... All previous works on the topic are, in the nicest possiblesense, blown out of the sky by a book which is, in both the proper and metaphorical meanings,monumental.' - Mark Lawson, Esquire


'No previous biography has... matched the power, range and lucidity of Martin Sherwin and KaiBird's Life... Its combination of meticulous scholarship and felicitous prose grasps the drama ofOppenheimer's life in all its riveting complexity. ' - Sunday Telegraph


'A giant among biographies, a life story that at times reads like a thriller but which is alsodeeply authoritative and persuasively informative.... Magisterial.' -Observer


'This is a magisterial biography: a masterpiece that has taken decades to puttogether.'- Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

Author Bio

Kai Bird is a contributing editor at The Nation and the author of several biographies, includingThe Chairman, The Color of Truth, The Good Spy and The Outlier. He is the recipient of a GuggenheimFellowship and a MacArthur Writing Fellowship

Martin J. Sherwin was a Professor of History at George Mason University. His other books include AWorld Destroyed, winner of the Stuart L. Bernath and the American History Bookprizes, and Gambling with Armageddon.