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

***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 TimesPhysicist 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 the most famous scientist of his generation. In their meticulous and riveting biography Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant ambitious complex and flawed man profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century. Review Reads like a thriller gripping and terrifying by turns... No more absorbing biography will I predict come out this year nor given the dangers we face a more important one. -- John Carey ―Sunday TimesFascinating... Enthralling... All previous works on the topic are in the nicest possible sense blown out of the sky by a book which is in both the proper and metaphorical meanings monumental. -- Mark Lawson ―EsquireNo previous biography has... matched the power range and lucidity of Martin Sherwin and Kai Birds Life... Its combination of meticulous scholarship and felicitous prose grasps the drama of Oppenheimers life in all its riveting complexity. ―Sunday TelegraphA giant among biographies a life story that at times reads like a thriller but which is also deeply authoritative and persuasively informative.... Magisterial. ―ObserverThis is a magisterial biography: a masterpiece that has taken decades to put together. -- Kathryn Hughes ―Mail on SundayAtremendous work of scholarship. ―Financial TimesDazzling... Rich in incident and enigma... It wears its scholarship lightly andwhisks the reader through the story at thriller-like pace. ―New StatesmanMagisterial... There have been many books on Oppenheimer... but American Prometheus is the first to attempt to explore more than a single facet... It is a portrait of the man the times the science and the politics... It is a vaulting ambition and it is amply rewarded. -- Judith Flanders ―SpectatorThe definitive biography... Oppenheimers life doesnt influence us. It haunts us. ―NewsweekA work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimers essential nature... It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging self-contradictory behavior. ―New York TimesAmasterful account of Oppenheimers rise and fall set in the context of the turbulent decades of Americas own transformation. It isa tour de force. ―Los Angeles Times Book ReviewThere have been numerous books about Oppenheimer but they cant touch thisextraordinary books impressive breadth and scope. ―Miami HeraldThe first biography to give full due to Oppenheimersextraordinary complexity... Stands as an Everest among the mountains of books on the bomb project and Oppenheimer and is an achievement not likely to be surpassed or equaled. ―Boston Globe About the Author A contributing editor at theNation Kai Bird is the author of several biographies including the Pulitzer Prize winnerAmerican Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Atlantic 2008) with Martin J. Sherwin. He lives in Washington D.C. and Nepal with his wife and son.Martin J. Sherwin is Professor of History at Tufts University abd University Professor at George Mason University. He is the author ofA World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies and with Kai Bird of the Pulitzer Prize winnerAmerican Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Atlantic 2008). He and his wife live in Washington D.C.