Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade ReviewPricilla J. McMillan understands that reality and, without patronizing the reader, writes an engrossing narrative that anyone with any level of background—or lack thereof—on this most important of subjects can follow
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New York Journal of BooksTable of ContentsForeward, 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
