Take American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer Translated By Kai Bird Physical Book

be honest, I had serious trouble rating this book, and I have similar trouble reviewing it,

If I were rating it entirely by a subjective scale, it would probably receive a onestar rating from me, a rating which I am loathe to give, because I am not at all certain it is deserved.


This book might be absolutely amazing and staggeringly interesting for someone who is genuinely curious about the life of J, Robert Oppenheimer or about the LeftRight politics in America and its relations to the Communist party, The problem on my end, and it is twofold, is that, while generally curious about the life of Oppenheimer as a great scientist and the enabler, if not direct maker, of the atomic bomb, I cannot say I have ever been interested in Oppenheimer the person overmuch.
Additionally, being no part of McCarthy's commissions, I really could care less whether he was or was not a member of the Communist party,

For me, the biggest flaws of the book were its dry and oftentimes tedious writing, which could not get me interested in a subject I had no real empathy towards to begin with, and its constant harking back to this same matter of whether or not Oppenheimer had actually carried an ACP card.


Truthfully I don't care, It seems obvious that Oppenheimer had very leftwing political leanings, sympathised with communism and socialism but was repelled by Russia's dictatorship, and may have participated in some CCP activities.
That's plenty for me about Oppie's politics, really, I don't care whether he actually ever paid dues to the party coffers, owned a little laminated card, gave it up, did not give it up, or what.
The fact that he was leftwing but not a diehard communist, and with no ties to Russia, can be established in one single chapter, not discussed for the entire significant and formidable length of the biography.
It's not as if the fact that he may actually have been a member of the ACP makes McCarthy's persecutions more justifiable or better, somehow!

There is something wrong with a book about Oppenheimer that dedicates to the atomic bomb a fraction of the attention it devoted to his party allegiance.


However, not to finish on a negative note, it's obviously a thoroughly researched work of scholarly significance, rigorous and thorough too thorough and would be good for those people who care about the issues I mentioned above.
So over south in the antipodes, in answer to the question, “Who was Oppenheimer ” would elicit a response that he was some evil scientist that pushed for the making of the atom bomb.
Context is key of course and the story is closer to a brilliant man and brilliant mind was able to coordinate the best minds in physics to explore the frontiers of science.
However the culmination of centuries of human investigation culminated in the creation of an atom bomb to be deployed on an enemy already on its knees to prevent a multiparty treaty.


When he refuses to pool his knowledge for methods of greater destruction, he is hounded as a communist and enemy of the state.


Meanwhile because of a combination of his personality and the pressures his family deteriorated as did the man,

The authors need to be commended for the painstaking detail of the research that has gone into this tome, They educate us to look beyond the headlines into the background, context, environment and historical positions of Oppie throughout his lifespan,

His ultimate ostracism guaranteed that we would never benefit as a society from the brilliance of his mind, but that the unread would curse him and hold him responsible for unleashing la bomba atomica onto the world.
Very good biography of a complicated and brilliant man, The witch hunt targeting communists and anyone who had ever associated with them or expressed any sympathies, no matter how far in the past, is distressing.
The idea that our own government, and our own society, can infringe on our liberties in such a way is nearly as worrisome as the oppressive regimes we oppose.
After watching the Nazis destroy the lives and careers of German Jews, we turn around and treat left leaning Americans with the same prejudice, Fortunately it didn't go as far as gas chambers, but vigilance is dictated, Interestingly, at present the White Christian Male is starting to be subject to the same hatred, We never learn, do we This is a very thorough book in some respects, and yet it is so narrow in scope I almost want to run out and read another Oppenheimer biography, and some histories that cover the same time period to get the personal details and background history the authors assumed you knew in THIS book.
Almost.

Sure, I'm familiar with the basic details of WWII, the McCarthy Era, and the atomic bomb, but if I wasn't this book wouldn't have helped much.
Instead, the authors follow J, Robert Oppenheimer's life in detail from birth to death with a laser's focus on every political relationship and communist connection he ever had, so much so everything else is in soft focus.
The book becomes at times a laundry list of names, connected to their political affiliations and possible communist leanings, Even Robert himself is given short shrift to the communist question, Every possible Communist connection is examined and reexamined so often, I felt like the authors had in effect become Oppenheimer's belated defense team,

Why did they feel Oppenheimer needed defending, you may be asking Wasn't he a brilliant physicist, the one who headed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb Yes, he certainly was.
Everyone in the scientific community was concerned that Germany was developing a bomb, including Oppenheimer, who was especially appalled over what was happening in fascist Germany, and horrified about what was being done to the Jews.
He was eager to use his scientific skills in service of his country, But the power of the bomb that was developed filled him with concern, especially after seeing it used against a Japan that was essentially already defeated.


Oppenheimer felt that the use of such weapons should be regulated not just by the U, S. , and that secrecy would lead to an arms race with the Soviet Union, and he was right, But his advocacy for free sharing of information, and an international committee to guide the use of atomic power was not what the U, S. government wanted to hear in thes, His opposition to the development of the Hbomb opened him up to suspicion, and he was investigated by the FBI, including the illegal wiretapping of his phones.


Oppenheimer had been working as a professor at Berkeley before the war, and as a liberal thinker he had had friends and family who were Communist, back when that meant opposition to the fascist regime in Spain, and improving social conditions at home.
He had donated money to various causes through the U, S. Communist party, which wasn't unusual for the time, His own brother and his wife had been members of the Communist party at one time, although Robert himself never had been, All of these connections were used against him by his opponents many years later, in hearings in thes,

Everything in the book leads up to Oppenheimer's hearings before the Personnel Security Board team put together by General Lewis Strauss, who was determined to both remove Oppenheimer from the Atomic Energy Commission, and remove his security clearance.
Strauss had clashed with Oppenheimer over the development of the Hbomb, and had developed a personal antipathy to the scientist, With the tacit consent of President Eisenhower, Strauss set up a star chamber hearing to railroad Oppenheimer out, using unfair tactics such as denying access to evidence and not releasing the list of witnesses to Oppenheimer's lawyers ahead of time.


Oppenheimer became seen as a Galileo type martyr to the scientific community, and though he was eventually rehabilitated and honored by President Johnson, Oppenheimer never truly recovered from the hearings.


All of this part of Oppenheimer's life we get in exhaustive detail, What you won't learn so much about is Oppenheimer's personal life, which is present in the book, but not examined, Oppenheimer had a magnetic personality, and many relationships with women that we hear just a little about, He had affairs, even after his marriage to Kitty, whose previous husband was a Communist who had died fighting in the Spanish Civil War, I wanted to know more about his relationship with Kitty, a tempestuous woman with a big drinking problem, We hear that the Oppenheimers gave parties where they lavished their guests with drinks, but then skimped on the food, That's fascinating, I wanted to know more about what was going on there, and hear what people thought about it, I wanted to know more about his children, and how they felt being raised in such a family, We get tantalizing bits and pieces about how Robert tried to give his daughter away to another family at Los Alamos, and never bonded with his son, but then we are torn away to hear again about more Communist stuff.
Can you hear my frustration

Sure, I figure there is WAY more documentation out there on the Communist issue, thanks to the FBI, than to Oppenheimer's personal life, and that's what the authors focused on.
They do a good job of presenting this information chronologically and clearly, and if that's what you're interested in, you won't be disappointed, You will get every detail you could ever hope for! But if you want to know Oppenheimer, the man, you will only get glimpses here.
Among the many controversies that color American history, almost none of them evoke as much passionate argument as the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.
For decades people have quarreled over their necessity, with virtually every historian writing about the war compelled to declare a position on the matter, Yet few such doubts troubled people at the time when the bombs were dropped, Not only did the rudimentary opinion polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans favored their use, but the news of their successful deployment turned the man who headed the project, Robert Oppenheimer, into a national hero.


Ironically, one of the few at the time who questioned the use of the bomb was Oppenheimer itself, While proud of the successful test in Julyof the device he spent nearly three demanding years shepherding into existence, this pride was soon tempered by the prospect of its use as a weapon of war.
Confessing to the president, Harry Truman, that he felt that he had “blood on his hands,” he tried to use his newfound celebrity to influence the direction of American policymaking in the hopes of warding off an arms race that could end humanity.
In less than a decade, however, Oppenheimer found himself driven from public life, forced into a melancholy exile from both physics and the corridors of power.
The arc of this career is at the heart of Kai Bird and Martin Sherwins biography of the man, This approach fuels their explanation of how a brilliant, sensitive individual came to play such an important role in building an unprecedented means of destruction, and why he ended up ostracized from the very system his achievement had empowered.


The authors trace the origins of Oppenheimers humanistic outlook to his upbringing, As the son of a wealthy textile importer and his cultured, artistically inclined wife, Robert enjoyed a privileged upbringing, Though both of his parents were of Jewish extraction, they had been married by Felix Adler, the founder of a reformist sect known as Ethical Culture, which embraced a broader, more secularlyoriented and humanist approach.
As a boy Robert was educated at the Ethical Culture Society School, where he excelled academically from the start, While Oppenheimer majored in chemistry at Harvard University, after graduating summa cum laude he turned to physics and pursued graduate studies in Europe at both Cambridge University and the University of Göttingen.
It was at Göttingen that Oppenheimer found himself at the heart of a pivotal moment in the development of theoretical physics, one in which he soon made a number of notable contributions himself.


Upon earning his doctorate at the age of justOppenheimer returned to the United States, where he took up a position at the University of California.
Once there he soon contributed markedly to the emergence of the school as a leading center for scientific study, and mentored an entire generation of promising young physicists.
Oppenheimer was also increasingly drawn to support various political causes of thes, particularly unionization and the fight against fascism in Europe, These brought him into association with several Communist Party members, which would create trouble for him in the decades that followed, Though Bird and Sherwin spend considerable space in the book delineating these relationships and exploring the question of whether Oppenheimer ever became a member of the party, their conclusion ultimately is an inconclusive one.
In the end, only Oppenheimer could really say for certain whether or not he was a Communist,

Oppenheimers association with Communists brought him to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and made several officials wary about employing him in the effort to develop an atomic bomb during the Second World War.
Yet Oppenheimers early contributions to the initial investigation of the “uranium problem” were so impressive that by the late summer ofhe had emerged as the clear choice to run the weapons laboratory where the bomb would be designed and built.
Oppenheimer grew quickly into the role, developing the administrative skills needed to harness and organize the enormous amount of scientific talent recruited to work at the Los Alamos site.
Despite the toll the enormous strain took on him, success vindicated his efforts, as within two and a half years the Los Alamos team built something that was unimaginable barely a halfdecade earlier.


Troubled as he was by the consequences of his achievement, Oppenheimer dedicated himself after the war to promoting international control of atomic technology.
These efforts were soon preempted, however, by the growing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, The circumstances of the emerging Cold War made Oppenheimers efforts to concede Americas advantage in atomic weapons particularly suspect, and the esteemed scientist increasingly found his counsel marginalized in policymaking circles.
Foremost among his opponents was Lewis Strauss, a Republican and member of the newlyformed Atomic Energy Commission, who regarded Oppenheimers views with growing hostility, After being named as the commissions chairman by Dwight Eisenhower inStrauss pushed to rescind Oppenheimers security clearance, with his efforts culminating in a series of hearings in the spring ofthat resulted in Oppenheimer losing his clearance the day before its expiration.


Bird and Sherwin argue that Oppenheimers humiliation had a chilling effect on the public debate over nuclear weapons by demonstrating that not even the scientists whose work made them possible were immune from retribution when they dissented openly.
And while Oppenheimer enjoyed a measure of rehabilitation in the years before his death from cancer in, he remained detached from public affairs to the end of his life.
It is difficult to finish this book without regret over this, as the authors portrait of Oppenheimer underscores the singular mixture of intellectual brilliance and wisdom that was lost as a result.
The sensitivity of their depiction of their subject is just one reason why their book is such an essential read for anyone interested in this fascinating figure.
Though some may bog down in their almost granular examination of Oppenheimers political associations, their decades of archival research and interviews with dozens of people who know Oppenheimer make this an

invaluable account of his life, one that recounts in clear and accessible prose both the scope of his achievements and the tragedy of his fate.
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