American Prometheus

***THE INSPIRATION FOR OPPENHEIMER WINNER OF 7 OSCARS, INCLUDING BEST PICTURE, BEST DIRECTOR AND BEST ACTOR***

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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 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.



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



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



A riveting account of one of history's most essential and paradoxical figures.



To Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, thank you for the 25 years you put into the book [American Prometheus] this film is based on



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.



I hate to say it, but, if you zip through all six hundred pages of the book before seeing the film, you'll enjoy the ride more.



Fascinating... 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.



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



A giant among biographies, a life story that at times reads like a thriller but which is also deeply authoritative and persuasively informative.... Magisterial.



This is a magisterial biography: a masterpiece that has taken decades to put together.



A tremendous work of scholarship.



Dazzling... Rich in incident and enigma... It wears its scholarship lightly and whisks the reader through the story at thriller-like pace.



Magisterial... 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.



The definitive biography... Oppenheimer's life doesn't influence us. It haunts us.



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.



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.



There have been numerous books about Oppenheimer but they can't touch this extraordinary book's impressive breadth and scope.



The first biography to give full due to Oppenheimer's extraordinary 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.