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The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer

And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race

Priscilla J. McMillan
foreword by Martin J. Sherwin, coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize−winning American Prometheus

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The true story of the government conspiracy to bring down J. Robert Oppenheimer, America’s most famous scientist.

On April 12, 1954, the nation was astonished to learn that J. Robert Oppenheimer was facing charges of violating national security. Could the director of the Manhattan Project, the visionary who led the effort to build the atom bomb, really be a traitor? In this riveting book, bestselling author Priscilla J. McMillan draws on newly declassified U.S. government documents and materials from Russia, as well as in-depth interviews, to expose for the first time the conspiracy that...

The true story of the government conspiracy to bring down J. Robert Oppenheimer, America’s most famous scientist.

On April 12, 1954, the nation was astonished to learn that J. Robert Oppenheimer was facing charges of violating national security. Could the director of the Manhattan Project, the visionary who led the effort to build the atom bomb, really be a traitor? In this riveting book, bestselling author Priscilla J. McMillan draws on newly declassified U.S. government documents and materials from Russia, as well as in-depth interviews, to expose for the first time the conspiracy that destroyed one of America’s most illustrious scientists.

McMillan recreates the fraught years from 1949 to 1955 when Oppenheimer and a group of liberal scientists tried to head off the cabal of hard-line air force officials, anti-Communist politicians, and rival scientists, including physicist Edward Teller, who were trying to seize control of U.S. policy and build ever more deadly nuclear weapons. Retelling the story of Oppenheimer’s trial, which took place in utmost secrecy, she describes how the government made up its own rules and violated many protections of the rule of law. She also argues that the effort to discredit Oppenheimer, occurring at the height of the McCarthy era and sanctioned by a misinformed President Eisenhower, was a watershed in the Cold War, poisoning American politics for decades and creating dangers that haunt us today.

A chilling tale of McCarthy-era machinations, this groundbreaking page-turner rewrites the history of the Cold War.

Reviews

Reviews

Pricilla J. McMillan understands that reality and, without patronizing the reader, writes an engrossing narrative that anyone with any level of background—or lack thereof—on this most important of subjects can follow

McMillan offers a meticulously detailed account of the trial and the McCarthy-era shenanigans that surrounded it.

Stunning... [an] extraordinary book.

This brief but penetrating account of [Oppenheimer's] downfall may come closest to explaining his contemporary relevance.

A must-read... No details are spared in exploring whether the hydrogen bomb's development could have been averted and history possibly changed, nor in examining the jealousy and deception that ultimately destroyed Oppenheimer.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
416
ISBN
9781421425672
Illustration Description
23 b&w photos
Table of Contents

Foreward, by Martin J. Sherwin
Preface
Introduction
Part One
1. David Lilienthal's Vacation
2. The Maneuvering Begins
3. The Halloween Meeting
4. The Secret Debate
5. Lost Opportunities
Part Two
6. Fuchs's

Foreward, by Martin J. Sherwin
Preface
Introduction
Part One
1. David Lilienthal's Vacation
2. The Maneuvering Begins
3. The Halloween Meeting
4. The Secret Debate
5. Lost Opportunities
Part Two
6. Fuchs's Betrayal
7. Fission versus Fusion
8. Teller
9. Ulam
Part Three
10. Teller's Choice
11. The Second Lab
12. A New Era
Part Four
13. Sailing Close to the Wind
14. Strauss Returns
15. Two Wild Horses
16. The Blank Wall
17. Hoover
18. The Hearing Begins
19. Smyth
20. Borden
21. Ceasar's Wife
22. Do We Really Need Scientists?
23. Oppenheimer
24. We Made It-and We Gave It Away
Postlude
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Martin J. Sherwin, PhD

Priscilla J. McMillan is an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. The author of the bestselling Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s Assassination of John F. Kennedy, her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and Scientific American, among other places.