The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer

And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4214-2567-2
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 416 Seiten, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 566 g

Reihe: Johns Hopkins Nuclear History and Contemporary Affairs

The true story of the government conspiracy to bring down J. Robert Oppenheimer, America’s most famous scientist.

On April 12, 1954, the nation was astonished to learn that J. Robert Oppenheimer was facing charges of violating national security. Could the director of the Manhattan Project, the visionary who led the effort to build the atom bomb, really be a traitor? In this riveting book, bestselling author Priscilla J. McMillan draws on newly declassified U.S. government documents and materials from Russia, as well as in-depth interviews, to expose for the first time the conspiracy that destroyed one of America’s most illustrious scientists.

McMillan recreates the fraught years from 1949 to 1955 when Oppenheimer and a group of liberal scientists tried to head off the cabal of hard-line air force officials, anti-Communist politicians, and rival scientists, including physicist Edward Teller, who were trying to seize control of U.S. policy and build ever more deadly nuclear weapons. Retelling the story of Oppenheimer’s trial, which took place in utmost secrecy, she describes how the government made up its own rules and violated many protections of the rule of law. She also argues that the effort to discredit Oppenheimer, occurring at the height of the McCarthy era and sanctioned by a misinformed President Eisenhower, was a watershed in the Cold War, poisoning American politics for decades and creating dangers that haunt us today.

A chilling tale of McCarthy-era machinations, this groundbreaking page-turner rewrites the history of the Cold War.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McMillan, Priscilla J

Weitere Mitwirkende

Sherwin, Martin J.

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreward, by Martin J. Sherwin
Preface
Introduction
Part One
1. David Lilienthal's Vacation
2. The Maneuvering Begins
3. The Halloween Meeting
4. The Secret Debate
5. Lost Opportunities
Part Two
6. Fuchs's Betrayal
7. Fission versus Fusion
8. Teller
9. Ulam
Part Three
10. Teller's Choice
11. The Second Lab
12. A New Era
Part Four
13. Sailing Close to the Wind
14. Strauss Returns
15. Two Wild Horses
16. The Blank Wall
17. Hoover
18. The Hearing Begins
19. Smyth
20. Borden
21. Ceasar's Wife
22. Do We Really Need Scientists?
23. Oppenheimer
24. We Made It-and We Gave It Away
Postlude
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Sherwin, Martin J.
Priscilla J. McMillan is an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. The author of the bestselling Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s Assassination of John F. Kennedy, her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and Scientific American, among other places.