Read the Book Behind ‘Oppenheimer’: ‘American Prometheus’ Is Back on the Bestsellers Chart
Christopher Nolan based his new film on a 2005 J. Robert Oppenheimer biography that won the Pulitzer Prize for literature
Oppenheimer is finally here and you can now see showtimes and reserve tickets online. The highly-anticipated film, directed by Christopher Nolan, revolves around the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the godfather of the atomic bomb.”
Oppenheimer is expected to contend for the box office crown with Barbie, while writer/director Nolan, and star Cillian Murphy, are already being pegged as awards season frontrunners.
While Nolan wrote the Oppenheimer screenplay on his own, he drew inspiration from American Prometheus, a 2005 biography on Oppenheimer that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The book has roared back to number one on the bestsellers charts, as audiences look to read the story behind the new film.
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Officially titled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the book was co-authored by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, two researchers who have covered World War II and Hiroshima, specifically, for decades.
The book is considered by many to be the definitive biography of Oppenheimer, tracing his career from his early life in New York City, to his formative years attending school in Europe, to the fortuitous chain of events that led the theoretical physicist to becoming director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during WWII.
Originally published by Vintage Books in 2005, Amazon has the reprint edition available right now for $15.99 online. The 721-page book is available on paperback and Kindle.
You can also listen to the Oppenheimer book on Audible, with American Prometheus narrated by Audie Award winner, Jeff Cummings. Use Audible’s current free trial offer to listen to the Oppenheimer audiobook online for free here. You can also download it for $26.
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Nolan has high-praise for the book, calling it “A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”
The publisher’s notes, meantime, herald American Prometheus as “the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” calling it “a rich evocation of America at midcentury, a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events-the Depression, World War II and the Cold War.”
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‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Epic Is a Scorching Depiction of America’s Ability to Create and Destroy Its Heroes
Cillian Murphy stars as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” in a stacked ensemble that includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Florence Pugh.
Oppenheimer
But there’s a method to Nolan’s approach, which becomes increasingly apparent as the two separate Washington hearings laced throughout the narrative intersect in the foreground and occupy the riveting final hour. And the emotionally affecting decision to close with an earlier private conversation between Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) elegantly brings it all back to the personal views of two men looking at their branch of science from different perspectives.
While the four-act structure asks a lot of the film’s audience, our patience and concentration are amply rewarded as the 1945 “Trinity” test in the New Mexico desert makes way for the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That defining moment in modern human history — crowning Oppenheimer as an American hero even as corrosive moral qualms play out across Murphy’s expressive face — then segues to a stomach-churning 1954 witch hunt, representing the most vile smear tactics of the McCarthy era.
Nolan expertly builds his dramatic crescendo by exposing the pain and humiliation of that hearing for Oppenheimer and his flinty wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), and then reopening those wounds five years later, during the Eisenhower administration’s Senate confirmation hearings for the nomination of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as secretary of commerce.
In a mighty ensemble of heavy-hitters, Downey gives the drama’s standout performance as Strauss, a founding member, and later chair, of the Atomic Energy Commission, whose political ambitions get tangled in his vindictiveness toward the arrogant Oppenheimer.
The actor makes him mild-mannered at first, playing up Strauss’ origins as a humble shoe salesman. The ruthlessness with which he pursues his goals is displayed only toward the end, when the stakes are at their highest, spilling out in a bitter torrent of rage. It’s a stunning moment of revelation and a reminder of skills that many of our best actors have put aside while they frolic around playing quippy superheroes for huge wads of cash.
Unexpectedly, I found it was the late-action intrigue — parallel strands unfolding in a dingy Capitol Hill conference room and in the Senate chamber — that left me breathlessly anticipating each new development, each betrayal and show of loyalty, each disclosure of who was pulling the strings. The extended setup prior to the Trinity test becomes more vital in retrospect, as we see how Oppenheimer’s associations both before and after he and his Manhattan Project team relocated to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to accelerate development of the atomic bomb, are dissected by political operators looking to discredit him.
As the central figure in this erudite saga of men and science, warfare and Washington opportunism, Murphy builds a fine-grained character portrait, making the soft-spoken Oppenheimer’s complexities no less evident for being a man of such outward restraint.
The actor’s piercing pale blue eyes are a window to the physicist’s lofty intellect, his dogged determination and, eventually, to his torment as he comes to acknowledge his naivety and face the ramifications of what he has set in motion. Rather than startle the world into playing nice, as he had ingenuously imagined, the Japanese bombings merely opened a door to the Cold War, and to the escalating threat of more powerful nuclear bombs — one that resonates louder than ever today. . ."
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