Tuesday 7 October 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests


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

When pink was far from rosy

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Atlantic, 736pp, £25,
Judith Flanders
Wednesday, 23rd January 2008

Judith Flanders on the new book by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘the father of the atomic bomb’, remembered that when he saw the first mushroom cloud rise in its terrifying beauty above the test site in New Mexico, a line from the Bhagavad-Gita came into his head: ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ According to a colleague, however, what he actually said was, ‘Now we’re all sons-of-bitches.’ Oppenheimer the legend vs. Oppenheimer the man. Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, in this magisterial reconstruction of the rise and fall of America’s first great theoretical physicist, are careful to give both sides, the Sanskrit-reading mystic and the down-to-earth pragmatist.

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