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

Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J. Robert Oppenheimer - director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - was the most famous scientist of his generation. In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.

"Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying by turns... No more absorbing biography will, I predict, come out this year, nor, given the dangers we face, a more important one." 
- Sunday Times

"I hate to say it, but, if you zip through all six hundred pages of the book before seeing the film, you'll enjoy the ride more." 
- New Yorker

"Fascinating... Enthralling... All previous works on the topic are, in the nicest possible sense, blown out of the sky by a book which is, in both the proper and metaphorical meanings, monumental." 
- Esquire

"No previous biography has... matched the power, range and lucidity of Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird's Life... Its combination of meticulous scholarship and felicitous prose grasps the drama of Oppenheimer's life in all its riveting complexity." 
- Sunday Telegraph