by Gene Allen

Some of us followed the recommendation at the November 8, 2022, AAAP meeting to read American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Even though the book bogged down in minutiae of the hearing testimony, its beginnings were quite enlightening and entertaining. A handful of AAAP members were sufficiently interested to attend what was to me a disappointing live chat with its author, Kai Bird, at the Institute for Advanced Study on May 18. While there was some fun encountering a celebrated author live and in person, none of his responses to even intellectually appealing requests for depth and elaboration consisted of more than quotes from the book. One got no feeling that he had any personal involvement with the world of his subject. His Pulitzer-winning creation seemed no more than a project he had completed some time ago. It made me expect that his researcher and coauthor, the historian Martin J. Sherwin, would have been a more invested and interesting interviewee. He sadly died in October 2021, but it was interesting to learn that he had once held a faculty position at Princeton University.

American Prometheus is reported to be the starting point for Christopher Nolan’s movie “Oppenheimer” which was released this past July. One should always question the authenticity of any supposedly historical account, but in general movies are particularly unfaithful to truth. Most TV and movie representations of semiautomatic handgun operation, for example, are shamefully false. When the last round has been expended, the slide locks open. It is utterly impossible to point it at someone and be surprised that pulling the trigger gives an empty click sound. And don’t let me get started about aviation sequences. Most are too preposterous for me to abide even sitting through them. So how much license did Nolan take with his account?

An alumni contact email in late September led me to an impressively erudite review of “Oppenheimer” at < https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fact-fiction-and-the-father-of-the-bomb-on-christopher-nolans-oppenheimer/ >.

The reviewer, Alex Wellerstein, is a professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, which appeared from the University of Chicago Press in 2021. He also writes Restricted Data: The Nuclear History Blog online, and his next book will be on atomic policy during the Truman administration. Wellerstein’s command of the historical record borders on awesome and his forensic evaluation of the movie is even-handed. He is neither derisive nor patronizing. Overall, one comes away with the sense that it is a worthy production. While sitting in a theater for three hours is not appealing, the movie will certainly deserve my attention when it reaches streaming services.