American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation - one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say this is the longest non-fiction book I've ever read for fun. It is exhaustively detailed and impeccably researched. It clocks in at 725 pages in book form and TWENTY-SEVEN HOURS in audio form. Fortunately, due to double speed listening on the Overdrive app, I spent about half that working my way through.
I stopped in the middle of listening to this book in order to listen to Bomb, which ended up being kind of a funny coincidence of timing. They cover a lot of the same ground, though American Prometheus covers it much much MUCH more minutely while focusing exclusively on Oppenheimer rather than the Manhattan Project (and its people) as a whole.
I also stopped toward the end to listen to Unbroken which was, again, a funny coincidence of timing. I've never been particularly interested in the WWII era but now I'm feeling like a bit of an expert.
Despite this book's exhaustive length I can honestly say I only felt bored briefly and infrequently. Bird and Sherwin move Oppenheimer's story along at a fairly fast clip and greatly humanize this god of science. They aptly illustrate his genius as well as the travesty that was his hearing in the 50s. This is a book I never would have looked twice at if not for the mention in Outliers but I'm really glad I picked it up.
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