There is a substantial body of literature surrounding the iconic figure of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The first book about him that I ever read was "The Oppenheimer Case: The Trial of a Security System," written by Charles Curtis and published soon after the hearings that led to removal of the physicist's top-secret clearance and the destruction of his public persona. The next was Robert Jungk's wonderful "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists."
In the former, the man who managed the creation of the first atomic bomb gets swallowed up, in a seemingly endless recitation of testimony. In the latter, this singular American personality stands in a crowd of brilliant scientific personalities.
It's time for "Oppie," as his intimates called him, to come out. And come out he does, in "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird and Martin Shirwin, the title of which boldly presages the authors' message. Prometheus is, of course, the Titan who stole fire from heaven and, for his prideful transgression, is punished mercilessly.
This may be the deepest, richest evocation yet of the awkward, advantaged New York City prodigy, who, as a flawed but brilliant young academic, stumbles toward a heady, awful collision with history. His story has real life chapters that would put a romance novel to shame, including, as they do, intrigue, treachery, betrayal, infidelity, drunkenness, suicide and, for some of the characters, even worse personal tragedy.
By contrast, "109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos" by Jennet Conant (granddaughter of scientist-educator James B. Conant) takes an odd view of the extraordinary doings on the mesa above Santa Fe that produced The Bomb. The focus is on Dorothy McKibben (who was recruited to run the downtown Santa Fe welcoming operation for those working on the atomic project, but ended up as mother hen to the top-secret program) and on McKibben's close relationship with Oppenheimer.
No "True Romances" stuff here, although Conant makes clear that McKibben loved the pork-pie-hatted physicist with the compelling pale blue eyes. Unfortunately, it's risky to hang a book like this on the actions and insights of a woman who, at the time of her hero's public disgrace, would write him a florid letter that included this kind of purple burble: "There you stand, the beautiful Robert, the open mind, and your thoughts and suggestions, which would quiet the din and still all hatred. Stand Robert, with the clarity and courage the world aches for. You speak, with the power of poetry and music."
Although the book needs a firmer foundation, McKibben does offer a place from which to explore the tensions and triumphs, the pettiness and privation, the ordinary and the most extraordinary, among those who occupied the secret scientific citadel that produced Fat Man and Little Boy, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the potential for humankind's self-destruction.
"American Prometheus" is by far the more important book. Its ambition is to explain one of the most important individuals in 20th century history. "109 East Palace" is an oddly affecting little companion piece, which really shouldn't work but finally does.
Bird and Sherwin pull no punches. They quote Oppenheimer on himself as a youngster ("I was an unctuous, repulsively good little boy") and describe his later, self-important attention to the Bhagavad Gita, which produced that famous quote after the atomic bomb test ("Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"). They describe both the cuts and kindnesses that Oppenheimer could deliver. They give attention to his personal failings before the Manhattan Project, to his surprising emergence as an inspirational and effective leader at Los Alamos, and to his fateful stumble into national controversy.
For today's reader, the exploitation of security fears and the consequences of national hysteria after World War II are instructive. Oppenheimer, while no innocent, remains McCarthyism's most prominent victim, and a worthy subject.
Swamped by the material and 20 years into the research, Sherwin asked journalist/biographer Kai Bird to help him finish. The choice was a good one. The writing here is clear and conversational.
"Like that rebellious Greek god Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus and bestowed it upon humankind, Oppenheimer gave us atomic fire," they write. "But then, when he tried to control it, when he sought to make us aware of its terrible dangers, the powers-that-be, like Zeus, rose up in anger to punish him."
Much of this thick book will seem familiar to readers of previous Oppenheimer biographies: a New York City youth, born in 1904 to intellectual, secular Jewish parents; quantum physics studies in Germany during the 1920s; the University of California faculty during the 1930s; helping develop nuclear weapons during World War II; speaking out against nuclear mass death after the war ended; battling the faux patriot slanderers blind to Oppenheimer's true love of country; refuge at the Princeton University Institute for Advanced Studies until his cancerous death -- recall that cigarette always hanging from his lips? -- in 1967.
The original material comes primarily from Sherwin's decision to connect Oppenheimer's family life to his work. That makes sense. Oppenheimer's loyal, close relationship with his brother Frank, for example, carried unforeseen consequences. "A person's public behavior and his policy decisions, and in Oppenheimer's case perhaps even his science, are guided by the private experiences of a lifetime," the authors say. Amen to that.
I have read two others from the massive pile of Oppenheimer biographies. They both showed strengths but were not superb. I doubt any of the others could improve upon "American Prometheus."
Sherwin's 1975 book, "A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies," has stood the test of time. So have Bird's massive lives and times of U.S. citizen diplomats John McCloy and the Bundy brothers, McGeorge and William.
I predict that 25 years from now, "American Prometheus" still will be read -- unless it is surpassed by one or both of the other Oppenheimer biographies scheduled for publication later this year. If any statement can be labeled "definitive," it would be the statement that "definitive biographies" rarely are. |
