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

xiii, 721 pp. 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.