The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer

And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race

Priscilla J. McMillan, Martin J. Sherwin

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English

Johns Hopkins University Press
15 January 2018

History of the Americas; The Cold War; Political science & theory; Mathematics & Sciences; History of science

Series: 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.

By: Priscilla J. McMillan
Foreword by: Martin J. Sherwin
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 567g
ISBN: 9781421425672
ISBN 10: 142142567X
Series: Johns Hopkins Nuclear History and Contemporary Affairs
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 15 January 2018
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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

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.

Reviews for The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race

Pricilla 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 -New York Journal of Books