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

American Prometheus is a long biography of Oppenheimer. The atomic bomb appears near the middle. The beginning covers his upbringing and his precociousness as a scientist. He bounced around a bit before finally leading the Manhattan project. He went to school at UC Berkeley. He was a leftist politically, and hung around many people who were card carrying communists. He appeared to have no objections to the communists and wanted what he thought was best for people. This would play a big role in the post-war part of his life.

For the Manhattan project, he led the group that was isolated in New Mexico. It was a very isolated "company town" of people working on the project. At first, Oppenheimer wanted everyone to be commissioned and treated as military, but later deferred to civilian status. They worked hard and achieved nuclear fission. However, he and others developed reservations on the deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

During the post-war period he was increasingly pacific. He loved working with nuclear physics, but did not want to have weapons actively deployed against people. Some others in authority did not like his views. Efforts were made to strip is security clearance and remove him from campus. The security clearance was removed in something akin to a kangaroo court trial. There were favors pulled and plenty of "tampering". The publication of the deliberation gave each side ammunition for their beliefs. The removal from campus was not successful. His brother Frank was also caught in the red scare (and would later go to found the San Francisco exploratorium after college).

The book gives the impression that Oppenheimer was a smart scientist who is well known today primarily due to the environment in which he lived. If Truman had not chosen to drop the atomic bombs or he had not been caught in the red scare, he would have probably just been a footnote in history.