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Rated American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 8/10

An amazing and important book. I learned so much about the Communist Party in the US pre-WWII and the "Red Scare" post WWII.<br/><br/>Oppenheimer was a complicated man, but no doubt brilliant, patriotic, and important.<br/><br/>It's so crazy to see this figure overlapped with Einstein and Feynman and Bohr, among others.<br/><br/>My favorite bit of the book came towards the end. Oppenheimer on style:<br/><br/><blockquote>The problem of doing justice to the implicit, the imponderable, and the unknown is of course not unique in politics. It is always with us in science, it is with us in most trivial of personal affairs, and it is one of the great problems of writing and of all forms of art. The means by which it is solved is sometimes called style. It is style which complements affirmation with limitation and with humility; it is style which makes it possible to act effectively, but not absolutely; it is style which, in the domain of foreign policy, enables us to find harmony between the pursuit of ends essential to us, and the regard for the views, the sensibilities, the aspirations of those to whom the problem may appear in another light; it is style which is the deference that action pays to uncertainty; it is above all style though which power defers to reason.</blockquote><br/><br/>My only critique is style, ironically. A large amount of the book is quotes from FBI interviews and wiretaps. Lot's of back and forth which made the content, at times, difficult and tedious to follow.<br/><br/>Overall, if you're into science or history, you'll like it. If you're into both, you'll love it.

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Published 2026-08-07 07:54 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere