Inside the Manhattan Project

REVIEWS BY EDWARD MORRIS

It is fitting that two excellent studies of Robert Oppenheimer, "the father of the atomic bomb," would emerge at a time when American politicians are butting heads with scientists over such subjects as global warming, stem-cell research and that golden oldie of discord, evolution. Although government officials were alarmed by Oppenheimer's left-leaning politics even as he assembled the team that would produce the dreadful bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, they still treated him with deference, knowing that, to a considerable degree, America's war efforts were in his hands.

When the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 brought Japan to its knees, Oppenheimer became a national hero. But he had moral qualms about the bombs—how they should be used as instruments of foreign policy and whether even more destructive ones should be built. These reservations, occurring as they did during a time when Russia was developing its own A-bombs, led to clashes between Oppenheimer and the more hawkish members of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and their allies in Congress.

In the spring of 1954, Oppenheimer was called before a board of inquiry and grilled for weeks about his real and suspected contacts with Communists before, during and after the war. Ultimately, the board voted two to one not to renew his security clearance, even though it concluded that he was a loyal U.S. citizen. Publicly, he was in disgrace, but the verdict also made him a cause célebrè among academics, the larger liberal community and fellow scientists around the world. As humiliating as his ordeal was, Oppenheimer suffered far less than many others who were trampled in the red scare. He was never imprisoned, never lost his job, never forbidden to travel abroad. By the time he died of throat cancer in 1967, much of his immediate postwar luster had been restored.

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's richly documented American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer focuses on his across-the-board brilliance, his magnetic (but often caustic) personality and the shifting political milieus that led to his elevation and downfall. Jennet Conant's, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos takes its title from the Santa Fe address of the office that administered the super-secret A-bomb operations in Los Alamos. Like American Prometheus, 109 East Palace presents a generally approving picture of the tormented scholar/scientist, and both books conclude that he was more than a little responsible for his own miseries.

Jennet Conant, the granddaughter of James B. Conant, president of Harvard and head of the "Manhattan Project" that developed the bomb, creates a cinematic view of the remote but bustling Los Alamos outpost with the charismatic Oppenheimer at its center. While she also delves into his politics, she is more concerned with the drama that transformed him from a relatively obscure university professor into a world-shaking colossus. Conant draws heavily on the written and spoken reminiscences of Dorothy McKibben, who ran the East Palace office with discreet but spectacular competence. Those who can't get enough of Oppenheimer may also wish to read his fictional portrayal in Joseph Kanon's 1997 thriller, Los Alamos.


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