The Reading Warehouse

J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s. They declared that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's nuclear secrets.

In this magisterial biography twenty-five years in the making, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography, the authors capture Oppenheimer's life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War.

Kai Bird is the coauthor, with Martin J. Sherwin, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. His other books include The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms. Bird's many honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation. A contributing editor for the Nation, he lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, with his wife and son.

Martin J. Sherwin won the Pulitzer Prize for his book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize for A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies. He is currently a University Professor at George Mason University and professor emeritus at Tufts, where he founded the Nuclear Age History Center.

Jeff Cummings, as an audiobook narrator, has won both an Earphones Award and the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Narration in Science and Technology. He is also a twenty-year veteran of the stage, having worked at many regional theaters across the country, from A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle and the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City and the International Mystery Writers' Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky. He also spent seven seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.