Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$14.99

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$15.86 - $37.66

Paperback
$15.15

List Price: $25.00 Details

Save: $9.85 (39%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, March 12 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 2 hrs 31 mins

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$15.15 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Thursday, March 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by J W Antiques

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Father of the Atomic Bomb: Robert OppenheimerLENGDUNG TUNGCHAMMA

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the authors

American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER Paperback – May 1, 2006

by Kai Bird (Author), Martin J. Sherwin (Author)

4.7 10,824 ratings

in Nuclear Physics

See all formats and editions

National Book Critics Circle AwardWinner, 2005
Pulitzer PrizeWinner, 2006

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$15.15","priceAmount":15.15,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"15","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"bj%2BxASqSDfIDK9e29O2TBrWqsb4oVlOHsmxT7WqkXh1AdbeRTP78txLKspGeQrpnAzHS5lS5E6w%2BiMjaTOdAcnmKSfjWcRMLe5KcyzKufesAIu5dgumPFbtmgcXNKw5el6WLK6LHE30%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$13.48","priceAmount":13.48,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"13","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"48","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"bj%2BxASqSDfIDK9e29O2TBrWqsb4oVlOHFJ%2BQGc42dA6NdXuPF8F5zjVJzlifd%2F3ogqRAJy1sKel9iJW1RJjjTqHMG42jCL3%2BI7EEk7mqgIFcD8dzM0abtqRIEW6nw%2FrL8YS1ub2Fsh7SHoPiwe9bsMuHiptDSidzefKBdIbE6ZhRCeaiQ48ZE1QR9YRPkTCf","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OPPENHEIMER • "A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”—Christopher Nolan

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative.

“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.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“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.” —The New York Times

Print length

721 pages
Language

English
Publication date

May 1, 2006
Dimensions

5.2 x 1.64 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0375726268
ISBN-13

978-0375726262
See all details

Frequently bought together

American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER

$15.15

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Mar 12

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

$10.38

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Mar 12

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

$17.84

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Mar 12

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

Richard Rhodes
3,715
Paperback
99 offers from $5.44
Ray Monk
319
Paperback
56 offers from $8.45
David Grann
71,219
Paperback
in Native American History
157 offers from $3.60
A. J. Baime
9,427
Paperback
85 offers from $5.40
Albert Einstein
3,071
Hardcover
15 offers from $7.99
Cynthia C. Kelly
99
Paperback
52 offers from $11.49

From the Publisher

the inspiration for the major motion picture oppenheimer

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The definitive biography.... Oppenheimer’s life doesn’t influence us. It haunts us.” —Newsweek

“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.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“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.” —The New York Times

“There have been numerous books about Oppenheimer but they can't touch this extraordinary book's impressive breadth and scope.” —The Miami Herald

“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.” —The Boston Globe

From the Back Cover

"American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials-an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force's plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's nuclear secrets.
"American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimer's life and times in revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in America and abroad, on massive FBI files and on close to a hundred interviews with Oppenheimer's friends, relatives and colleagues.
We follow him from his earliest education at the turn of the twentieth century at New York City's Ethical Culture School, through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the world's mostaccomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of theoretical physics, and where he became deeply involved with social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were communists. Then to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he transformed a bleak mesa into the world's most potent nuclear weapons laboratory-and where he himself was transformed. And finally, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed from 1947 to 1966.
"American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at midcentury, a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events-the Depression, World War II and the Cold War. It is at once biography and history, and essential to our understanding of our recent past-and of our choices for the future.

About the Author

KAI BIRD is the author of The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms. He coedited with Lawrence Lifschultz Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. A contributing editor of The Nation, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

MARTIN J. SHERWIN is the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, as well as the American History Book Prize. He and his wife live in Boston and Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
In the first decade of the twentieth century, science initiated a second American revolution. A nation on horseback was soon transformed by the internal combustion engine, manned flight and a multitude of other inventions. These technological innovations quickly changed the lives of ordinary men and women. But simultaneously an esoteric band of scientists was creating an even more fundamental revolution. Theoretical physicists across the globe were beginning to alter the way we understand space and time. Radioactivity was discovered on March 1, 1896, by the French physicist Henri Becquerel. Max Planck, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie and others provided further insights into the nature of the atom. And then, in 1905, Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity. Suddenly, the universe appeared to have changed.

Around the globe, scientists were soon to be celebrated as a new kind of hero, promising to usher in a renaissance of rationality, prosperity and social meritocracy. In America, reform movements were challenging the old order. Theodore Roosevelt was using the bully pulpit of the White House to argue that good government in alliance with science and applied technology could forge an enlightened new Progressive Era.

Into this world of promise was born J. Robert Oppenheimer, on April 22, 1904. He came from a family of first- and second-generation German immigrants striving to be American. Ethnically and culturally Jewish, the Oppenheimers of New York belonged to no synagogue. Without rejecting their Jewishness they chose to shape their identity within a uniquely American offshoot of Judaism—the Ethical Culture Society—that celebrated rationalism and a progressive brand of secular humanism. This was at the same time an innovative approach to the quandaries any immigrant to America faced—and yet for Robert Oppenheimer it reinforced a lifelong ambivalence about his Jewish identity.

As its name suggests, Ethical Culture was not a religion but a way of life that promoted social justice over self-aggrandizement. It was no accident that the young boy who would become known as the father of the atomic era was reared in a culture that valued independent inquiry, empirical exploration and the free-thinking mind—in short, the values of science. And yet, it was the irony of Robert Oppenheimer’s odyssey that a life devoted to social justice, rationality and science would become a metaphor for mass death beneath a mushroom cloud.

Robert’s father, Julius Oppenheimer, was born on May 12, 1871, in the German town of Hanau, just east of Frankfurt. Julius’ father, Benjamin Pinhas Oppenheimer, was an untutored peasant and grain trader who had been raised in a hovel in “an almost medieval German village,” Robert later reported. Julius had two brothers and three sisters. In 1870, two of Benjamin’s cousins by marriage emigrated to New York. Within a few years these two young men—named Sigmund and Solomon Rothfeld—joined another relative, J. H. Stern, to start a small company to import men’s suit linings. The company did extremely well serving the city’s flourishing new trade in ready-made clothing. In the late 1880s, the Rothfelds sent word to Benjamin Oppenheimer that there was room in the business for his sons.

Julius arrived in New York in the spring of 1888, several years after his older brother Emil. A tall, thin-limbed, awkward young man, he was put to work in the company warehouse, sorting bolts of cloth. Although he brought no monetary assets to the firm and spoke not a word of English, he was determined to remake himself. He had an eye for color and in time acquired a reputation as one of the most knowledgeable “fabrics” men in the city. Emil and Julius rode out the recession of 1893, and by the turn of the century Julius was a full partner in the firm of Rothfeld, Stern & Company. He dressed to fit the part, always adorned in a white high-collared shirt, a conservative tie and a dark business suit. His manners were as immaculate as his dress. From all accounts, Julius was an extremely likeable young man. “You have a way with you that just invites confidence to the highest degree,” wrote his future wife in 1903, “and for the best and finest reasons.” By the time he turned thirty, he spoke remarkably good English, and, though completely self-taught, he had read widely in American and European history. A lover of art, he spent his free hours on weekends roaming New York’s numerous art galleries.

It may have been on one such occasion that he was introduced to a young painter, Ella Friedman, “an exquisitely beautiful” brunette with finely chiseled features, “expressive gray-blue eyes and long black lashes,” a slender figure—and a congenitally unformed left hand. To hide this deformity, Ella always wore long sleeves and a pair of chamois gloves. The glove covering her left hand contained a primitive prosthetic device with a spring attached to an artificial thumb. Julius fell in love with her. The Friedmans, of Bavarian Jewish extraction, had settled in Baltimore in the 1840s. Ella was born in 1869. A family friend once described her as “a gentle, exquisite, slim, tallish, blue-eyed woman, terribly sensitive, extremely polite; she was always thinking what would make people comfortable or happy.” In her twenties, she spent a year in Paris studying the early Impressionist painters. Upon her return she taught art at Barnard College. By the time she met Julius, she was an accomplished enough painter to have her own students and a private rooftop studio in a New York apartment building.

All this was unusual enough for a woman at the turn of the century, but Ella was a powerful personality in many respects. Her formal, elegant demeanor struck some people upon first acquaintance as haughty coolness. Her drive and discipline in the studio and at home seemed excessive in a woman so blessed with material comforts. Julius worshipped her, and she returned his love. Just days before their marriage, Ella wrote to her fiancé: “I do so want you to be able to enjoy life in its best and fullest sense, and you will help me take care of you? To take care of someone whom one really loves has an indescribable sweetness of which a whole lifetime cannot rob me. Good-night, dearest.”

On March 23, 1903, Julius and Ella were married and moved into a sharp-gabled stone house at 250 West 94th Street. A year later, in the midst of the coldest spring on record, Ella, thirty-four years old, gave birth to a son after a difficult pregnancy. Julius had already settled on naming his firstborn Robert; but at the last moment, according to family lore, he decided to add a first initial, “J,” in front of “Robert.” Actually, the boy’s birth certificate reads “Julius Robert Oppenheimer,” evidence that Julius had decided to name the boy after himself. This would be unremarkable—except that naming a baby after any living relative is contrary to European Jewish tradition. In any case, the boy would always be called Robert and, curiously, he in turn always insisted that his first initial stood for nothing at all. Apparently, Jewish traditions played no role in the Oppenheimer household.

Sometime after Robert’s arrival, Julius moved his family to a spacious eleventh-floor apartment at 155 Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River at West 88th Street. The apartment, occupying an entire floor, was exquisitely decorated with fine European furniture. Over the years, the Oppenheimers also acquired a remarkable collection of French Postimpressionist and Fauvist paintings chosen by Ella. By the time Robert was a young man, the collection included a 1901 “blue period” painting by Pablo Picasso entitled Mother and Child, a Rembrandt etching, and paintings by Edouard Vuillard, André Derain and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Three Vincent Van Gogh paintings—Enclosed Field with Rising Sun (Saint-Remy, 1889), First Steps (After Millet) (Saint-Remy, 1889) and Portrait of Adeline Ravoux (Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890)—dominated a living room wallpapered in gold gilt. Sometime later they acquired a drawing by Paul Cézanne and a painting by Maurice de Vlaminck. A head by the French sculptor Charles Despiau rounded out this exquisite collection.*

Ella ran the household to exacting standards. “Excellence and purpose” was a constant refrain in young Robert’s ears. Three live-in maids kept the apartment spotless. Robert had a Catholic Irish nursemaid named Nellie Connolly, and later, a French governess who taught him a little French. German, on the other hand, was not spoken at home. “My mother didn’t talk it well,” Robert recalled, “[and] my father didn’t believe in talking it.” Robert would learn German in school.

On weekends, the family would go for drives in the countryside in their Packard, driven by a gray-uniformed chauffeur. When Robert was eleven or twelve, Julius bought a substantial summer home at Bay Shore, Long Island, where Robert learned to sail. At the pier below the house, Julius moored a forty-foot sailing yacht, christened the Lorelei, a luxurious craft outfitted with all the amenities. “It was lovely on that bay,” Robert’s brother, Frank, would later recall fondly. “It was seven acres . . . a big vegetable garden and lots and lots of flowers.” As a family friend later observed, “Robert was doted on by his parents. . . . He had everything he wanted; you might say he was brought up in luxury.” But despite this, none of his childhood friends thought him spoiled. “He was extremely generous with money and material things,” recalled Harold Cherniss. “He was not a spoiled child in any sense.”

By 1914, when World War I broke out in Europe, Julius Oppenheimer was a very prosperous businessman. His net worth certainly totaled more than several hundred thousand dollars—which made him the equivalent of a multimillionaire in current dollars. By all accounts, the Oppenheimer marriage was a loving partnership. But Robert’s friends were always struck by their contrasting personalities. “He [Julius] was jolly German-Jewish,” recalled Francis Fergusson, one of Robert’s closest friends. “Extremely likeable. I was surprised that Robert’s mother had married him because he seemed such a hearty and laughing kind of person. But she was very fond of him and handled him beautifully. They were very fond of each other. It was an excellent marriage.”

Julius was a conversationalist and extrovert. He loved art and music and thought Beethoven’s Eroica symphony “one of the great masterpieces.” A family friend, the anthropologist George Boas, later recalled that Julius “had all the sensitiveness of both his sons.” Boas thought him “one of the kindest men I ever knew.” But sometimes, to the embarrassment of his sons, Julius would burst out singing at the dinner table. He enjoyed a good argument. Ella, by contrast, sat quietly and never joined in the banter. “She [Ella] was a very delicate person,” another friend of Robert’s, the distinguished writer Paul Horgan, observed, “. . . highly attenuated emotionally, and she always presided with a great delicacy and grace at the table and other events, but [she was] a mournful person.”

Four years after Robert’s birth, Ella bore another son, Lewis Frank Oppenheimer, but the infant soon died, a victim of stenosis of the pylorus, a congenital obstruction of the opening from the stomach to the small intestine. In her grief, Ella thereafter always seemed physically more fragile. Because young Robert himself was frequently ill as a child, Ella became overly protective. Fearing germs, she kept Robert apart from other children. He was never allowed to buy food from street vendors, and instead of taking him to get a haircut in a barber shop Ella had a barber come to the apartment.

Introspective by nature and never athletic, Robert spent his early childhood in the comfortable loneliness of his mother’s nest on Riverside Drive. The relationship between mother and son was always intense. Ella encouraged Robert to paint—he did landscapes—but he gave it up when he went to college. Robert worshipped his mother. But Ella could be quietly demanding. “This was a woman,” recalled a family friend, “who would never allow anything unpleasant to be mentioned at the table.”

Robert quickly sensed that his mother disapproved of the people in her husband’s world of trade and commerce. Most of Julius’s business colleagues, of course, were first-generation Jews, and Ella made it clear to her son that she felt ill-at-ease with their “obtrusive manners.” More than most boys, Robert grew up feeling torn between his mother’s strict standards and his father’s gregarious behavior. At times, he felt ashamed of his father’s spontaneity—and at the same time he would feel guilty that he felt ashamed. “Julius’s articulate and sometimes noisy pride in Robert annoyed him greatly,” recalled a childhood friend. As an adult, Robert gave his friend and former teacher Herbert Smith a handsome engraving of the scene in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus where the hero is unclasping his mother’s hand and throwing her to the ground. Smith was sure that Robert was sending him a message, acknowledging how difficult it had been for him to separate from his own mother.

When he was only five or six, Ella insisted that he take piano lessons. Robert dutifully practiced every day, hating it all the while. About a year later, he fell sick and his mother characteristically suspected the worst, perhaps a case of infantile paralysis. Nursing him back to health, she kept asking him how he felt until one day he looked up from his sickbed and grumbled, “Just as I do when I have to take piano lessons.” Ella relented, and the lessons ended.

In 1909, when Robert was only five, Julius took him on the first of four transatlantic crossings to visit his grandfather Benjamin in Germany. They made the trip again two years later; by then Grandfather Benjamin was

seventy-five years old, but he left an indelible impression on his grandson. “It was clear,” Robert recalled, “that one of the great joys in life for him was reading, but he had probably hardly been to school.” One day, while watching Robert play with some wooden blocks, Benjamin decided to give him an encyclopedia of architecture. He also gave him a “perfectly conventional” rock collection consisting of a box with perhaps two dozen rock samples labeled in German. “From then on,” Robert later recounted, “I became, in a completely childish way, an ardent mineral collector.” Back home in New York, he persuaded his father to take him on rock-hunting expeditions along the Palisades. Soon the apartment on Riverside Drive was crammed with Robert’s rocks, each neatly labeled with its scientific name. Julius encouraged his son in this solitary hobby, plying him with books on the subject. Long afterward, Robert recounted that he had no interest in the geological origins of his rocks, but was fascinated by the structure of crystals and polarized light.

From the ages of seven through twelve, Robert had three solitary but all-consuming passions: minerals, writing and reading poetry, and building with blocks. Later he would recall that he occupied his time with these activities “not because they were something I had companionship in or because they had any relation to school—but just for the hell of it.” By the age of twelve, he was using the family typewriter to correspond with a number of well-known local geologists about the rock formations he had studied in Central Park.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage Books; Reprint edition (May 1, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 721 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375726268
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375726262
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.64 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Nuclear Physics (Books)
- #3 in Scientist Biographies
- #14 in World History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 10,824 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Kai Bird
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer. His new book is The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. A biography of a CIA officer, The Good Spy was released on May 20, 2014 by Crown/Random House. Kai's last book was a memoir about the Middle East entitled Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Scribner, April 27, 2010). It was a 2011 Finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's writing fellowship, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Center, Bellagio, Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Miami Beach.
See more on the author's page
Martin J. Sherwin
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

10,824 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

J. S

Compelling Reading: An Important Conversation of Our Values as a Society

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2024

Verified Purchase

The phrase, "The Story of Our Time" is emphasized within the title of one main bonus feature included with the purchase of Christopher Nolan's film, "Oppenheimer". I wish to declare that a dramatization of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer in and of itself, is not equivalent to "The [Entire] Story of Our Time," however - due to manifold complications veiled within higher dimensionality not currently understood by the majority of the global population.

"The [Elaborate] Story of Our Time", involves the existence of one sub-Rosa transnational Fourth Reich Deep National Security State Illegal Secret Government, of which has been disclosed by numerous individuals.

I believe it is prudent to express how each one of us, as sentient manifestations in consciousness, plays an imperative role within establishing a collective framework of what people recognize and / or experience, as reality.

The following statements are attributed to the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL):

"Inspired by a profound experience of personal discovery, Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell created IONS in 1973 to explore the interplay between scientific knowledge and inner knowing.

Today, IONS has the world’s largest team of multidisciplinary scientists conducting research on frontier topics in consciousness and its impact in our lives."

"The International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) is a consortium of individuals from all walks of life, united within a shared passion: understanding consciousness for a better tomorrow."

STAR, LLC has implemented various copyrighted research, including a comprehensive explanation of reality, within their 8-slide presentation, "Cosmos: The Holographic Conscious Universe".

Author Paola Leopizzi Harris first released the relevant publication, "Trinity – The Best-Kept Secret: Meticulous Research Reveals How 'Alien' Technology Has Been Concealed" with coauthor Jacques F. Vallée in 2021, the title of which correlates with the founding atomic weapon test, in the Tularosa Basin of White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's attributed citation of the phrase, "Now I am become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds." from the Bhagavad Gita in 1945, is critical. For earth has experienced steadily increased interest from enlightened extraterrestrial civilizations since the time of the Trinity test, due to the destructive nature nuclear weapons invoke upon higher dimensionality within a veiled construct of quantum physics – the reality of which has been withheld by rogue operatives within a transnational Military Industrial Complex, intent on maintaining an archaic petrodollar-based geopolitical structure, that has brought our civilization and planet towards the brink of biosphere collapse within unnecessary climate and energy crises and various other atrocities.

For this reason, authentic Extraterrestrial Vehicles (ETVs) have shown interest at times around incorporated nuclear weapons facilities; yet in no way, do these visitors pose as "threat(s)"!

It is therefore important to learn to recognize the need to incorporate acute discernment, in our naivety… we cannot necessarily trust corporate mainstream media outlets, because of Intelligence Community infiltration. In truth, a psychological warfare program was unleashed in the late 1940s / early 1950s, based upon the corrupt desires of the Military Industrial Complex, against enlightened extraterrestrial civilizations; this is why almost all "national security" interests / corporate mainstream media representations of extraterrestrials have and continue to condition homo sapiens (humanity, who share over 90% of DNA with Chimpanzees, who are known to form groups in warring against one another), to "fear the unknown" / all things "alien" within what is referred to as, deceptive Indication & Warning(s) {I & W [False Flag (Military terminology)]}.

Transcendental meditation, as utilized within various pursuits including but not limited to prayer, utilizes higher capacities of the sentient mind, which have historically been miscategorized as the stuff of science fiction, or that of which may merely be available to a few gifted "psychics".

Please witness the following, eluding to the reality of quantum physics:

"When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love…

If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men…"

Excerpted from the compilation "Paris Talks"; "The Pitiful Causes of War, and the Duty of Everyone to Strive for Peace" – 'Abdu'l-Bahá, October 21st, 1911

Additional resources include but are not limited to the following:

Secrets of Power, Volume I - The Individual Empowerment vs. The Societal Panorama of Power and Depowerment, by Ingo Swann

Secrets of Power, Volume II - The Vitalizing of Individual Powers, by Ingo Swann

Phenomena - The Secret History of the U. S. Government's Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, by Annie Jacobsen

Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP, by Ingo Swann

Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial & Human Telepathy, by Ingo Swann

Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion: Tesla, UFOs and Classified Aerospace Technology, by Paul A. LaViolette, Ph. D.

Documentary Films:

Sirius
Unacknowledged: An Exposé of the World's Greatest Secret
Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun
The Cosmic Hoax: An Exposé
The Lost Century: And How to Reclaim It

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Charles Salmans

A Brilliant, Contradictory, and Sometimes Naive Man

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2023

Verified Purchase

American Prometheus
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
This book, in essence, is about one man’s struggle to define morality and his corollary effort to define responsibilities related to love of country. As such, it is timeless. The struggle between what we can do and what we ought to do continues 78 years since the detonation of atomic bombs over Japanese cities.

Robert Oppenheimer’s life is extraordinary. It is also very human story — although with a level of brilliance, contradictory inspiration, and naiveté that surpasses ordinary mortals. This detailed and well-researched biography by authors Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin compels us to consider our own professional, political, and moral standards and contradictions.

Oppenheimer in the 1930s was not so much ignorant of politics as indifferent, the authors tell us. As was the case with many who questioned capitalism during the Great Depression, he had many friends who were committed to the Communist Party and leftist ideology, including those who were formal members of the party and those who were sympathetic to many of its ideas. But Oppenheimer never himself became a propagandist for Communist ideas.

Later, when Oppenheimer assumed responsibility for the Manhattan Project and was aware of the importance of secrecy, he didn’t cut off socializing with those who were “fellow travelers” or more, but simply insured that he revealed nothing about the project itself. On several occasions he was lackadaisical, failing to report at least one attempt to get him to convey technical secrets to a longstanding friend who he knew to be a Communist. Later interrogated by FBI agent Boris Pash about being approached, he not only refused to name that person but unaccountably suggested two fictitious incidents had occurred. This casual response, taking place without a lawyer, came to haunt him.

What Oppenheimer didn’t realize was the extent to which he had been targeted by J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI because of his relationships with those on the left. The authors also explain that formal membership in the Communist Party was usually secret and one’s degree of party commitment was ill-defined. Thus as Hoover’s agents interviewed party members, many assumed that Oppenheimer was “one of us” and stated this belief to the FBI. Many of the FBI’s files contained unverified hearsay. Additional “evidence” against Oppenheimer was collected in illegal wiretaps that the FBI hid from Oppenheimer, his attorneys and shared only with those who would ultimately judge whether he was a security risk.

At the end of the war Oppenheimer misjudged Lewis Strauss, who was appointed head of the Atomic Energy Commission. He held Strauss is open contempt and thereby guaranteed that Strauss became an enemy and would dedicate himself to Oppenheimer’s persecution and ultimate loss of a security clearance.

The book makes a case that Oppenheimer was man brilliant in many ways, but even more extraordinary as an individual who could rise to new occasions. Thus, this theoretical physicist who never managed a bureaucracy became a practical and charismatic leader who led hundreds of top scientists and thousands of others to develop the atomic bomb.

Once having successfully tested the device, Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists had no say in how the bomb would be employed — although they certainly were aware that it could be used against civilian targets. So the actually consequences of their work came as a shock and in Oppenheimer’s case, apparent depression.

Immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer drafted a report arguing that 1) It will be impossible for the United States to have a monopoly on bomb technology, 2) No military countermeasures will prevent effective delivery of atomic weapons, and 3) Devices will become bigger and more lethal. Thus there was a critical need to find a way to make future wars impossible.

Together with physicist Isidor Rabi, he proposed that the U.S. relinquish control over the bomb and the use of nuclear energy to an international body. If a nation pursued the bomb they would be banned from the peaceful use of atomic energy such as in power plants. Oppenheimer was appointed to a Board of Consultants chaired by Dean Acheson and with General Leslie Groves and other prominent men among the membership. In March, 1946 they produced a report, largely written by Oppenheimer, that called for an international agency that would have sovereignty over uranium mines, nuclear power plants, and laboratories.

Oppenheimer also opposed the development of the hydrogen or “Super” bomb, which put him in conflict with Edward Teller, Strauss, and much of the military — particularly the Air Force.

Whether the surrender of control over nuclear weapons was ever realistic, events soon scuttled the idea due to the Soviet Union’s control of Eastern Europe and its own development of an atomic bomb.

By this time, Oppenheimer realized that the idea of international control would not take place and again shifted his position, accepting that the United States had to defend its own sovereignty against others who possessed nuclear weapons. But in effect he had always been a patriot, arguing as he saw it for what was in U.S. national interest as well as essential to mankind.

Bird and Sherwin have written a wonderful book about a complex man and complex problems that we have made little progress in resolving since Oppenheimer’s time. The man was unfairly judged in his time. His warnings are pertinent today.

54 people found this helpful

Helpful

Geddes J

OPPIE

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2024

Verified Purchase

This is a long book. The story probably could have been told in less pages, effective and efficiently. Looks had a great mind but he had flaws of character and that brought his downfall. He had a trouble wife and they had no clue about how to raise their two children . The book is an interesting reading.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Uma Iyer Van Roosenbeek

An amazing, illuminatory and enthralling story of a formidable scientist!

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2024

Verified Purchase

Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin have done an awe-inspiring, stupendous and extraordinary job of telling the story of a magnificent man, a phenomenal physicist who also had an overall wondrous personality!! A person who was an all rounder in most aspects of life. He also had quirks, and at times impatience with the people he dealt with that made him unpopular with some of his acquaintances!

way he changes after losing his security clearance has to be read to be understood. He adjusted to his changed circumstances very well. He also had loyal friends like Dr. Rabi and others who stood by him through all the facets of his life.

Reading this awesome book was a life changing experience that made me wish I had chosen Physics instead of my own field of expertise!

Kudos to the authors! They deserved the Pulitzer!! And the pictures at the end of the book are most precious, resplendent and stupendous!!!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

AS

Master piece

Reviewed in Canada on February 4, 2024

Verified Purchase

One of the best books ever written

Miguel Barón

Before I could realize I was fully immersed in the witch-hunting McCarthy era

Reviewed in Mexico on December 15, 2023

Verified Purchase

Capturing the sanctum sanctorum behind the tale of such an enigmatic and controversial figure like J. Robbert Oppenheimer, by itself is a nontrivial effort. While reading through the pages of the book I could only imagine the amount of documents gathered and reviewed to deliver such a well-written and engaging narrative the way Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin did.

At times I felt I was reading a novel, with twists, ups, and downs, and before I could realize I was fully immersed in the witch-hunting McCarthy era in which the most remarkable victim by far is the man whose face is on the cover.

Oppenheimer's life is full of shades of grey, worth being studied in the secular way the authors and the team of collaborators did. This is by far the most seminal work I have read that introduces you not only to the physics of the last century but also to the Shakespearean tragedy of the man who was betrayed by his own kind.

MARKUS VINICIUS BORBA

Entrega e produto

Reviewed in Brazil on September 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

O livro foi entregue em boa condições. Não houve nenhum problema em relação à importação e chegou antes do prazo estipulado. A qualidade do livro é razoável, com a capa e miolo bem frágeis. No total, foi uma boa experiência.

2 people found this helpful

Translate review to English

Antony

A long and thorough biography of an interesting man.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2024

Verified Purchase

This is a long book, but it's about a complex subject - the man, his life, his work, and what his government did to him.

It's well written, and very readable (although probably not in one sitting).

Above all it highlights the extent to which the American government allowed individuals in positions of power and influence (Lewis Strauss, Joseph McCarthy) to act against the law, the constitution and human reason for their own personal agendas.

We can only hope that current and future governments (not only the American ones) take note of both the injustices which have happened, and also re-consider their policies in the light of what is best for the population of the Earth. Any country which thinks it can monopolise world affairs is a danger and a threat to everyone.

One person found this helpful

Sol

Prodigious Tale of Human genius and frailty

Reviewed in India on February 5, 2024

Verified Purchase

Brilliant book by a great author. Amazing depth and detail. Required reading for all of us who live in the Atomic age of warfare.

See more reviews

Return this item for free

Image Unavailable

Follow the authors