American Prometheus

Good but read The Making of the Atomic Bomb instead

The bomb is used halfway through this book and the rest is about the tragedy of the McCarthy era. It includes a play-by-play of terrible moments in anti-communist fear mongering. It's worthwhile history though not nearly as interesting as the complexities of Oppenheimer's success in leading scientists with competing egos under immense pressure.

I knew of the atomic bombings from the Japanese side but going into this book I didn't know about Oppenheimer (the “father of the atomic bomb”) so I learnt a lot. However at 600 pages this book is very dense, which I guess serves its purpose as a very-detailed biography. I do wish it was a bit easier to read, though!

I started reading this book because I did not know much about the creation of the atomic bomb or anything about Robert Oppenheimer. While it is interesting to learn about Oppenheimer and the bomb, what is most interesting for me is the history of the unchecked power of the early FBI, political innuendo, and the scare tactics of the anti-communist 1940s and 1950s.

Overall this was a interesting book. I listened to it (as I like to do with many long biographies). But the sound quality was not great. The volume kept changing and it would be a bit muffled and then go very clear, and then back muffled again.

A longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/american-prometheus-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer/