OPPENHEIMER AND THE ATOMIC BOMB

A meticulous account of the rise and fall of a brilliant scientist.

Though only around half the page length of the prize-winning American Prometheus (2005), the inspiration for the 2023 film, this bulky adaptation for young people still bulges with finely chopped details. The authors cover Oppenheimer’s life, from houses and horses to the kangaroo court government hearing that led to his instant downfall from “America’s darling physicist” to “the most prominent victim of the McCarthy era.” Disappointingly, readers willing to stay the course won’t find the original’s probing study of the scientific breakthroughs and engineering miracles that Oppenheimer presided over as director of the Manhattan Project, which engendered the first nuclear weapons. What still emerges very clearly is how the conflict between his deep moral sensibility and his equally profound love for scientific truth and the country that betrayed him made him a tragic hero in the classic vein. The major figures are white, but the authors properly acknowledge the government’s cavalier displacement of Latine farmers around Los Alamos and the Micronesian residents of the Bikini Atoll, along with the relentless toll radioactive dust has taken on these communities. The authors also repeatedly note that Japanese leaders were maneuvering toward surrender even as the U.S. government killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A searching, scorching study of a complex character, trimmed but still weighed down by too much minor detail.