American Prometheus

The inspiration for Oppenheimer, winner of 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor

The Sunday Times bestseller

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

"Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying" — Sunday Times

Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J. Robert Oppenheimer — director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb — was the most famous scientist of his generation. In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.