American Prometheus is a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, who was the lead scientist on the Manhattan Project and was, after World War II, called the "Father of the Atomic Bomb." This was the book that served as much of the source material for the 2023 movie by Christopher Nolan.
This book is best described as a slog to get through. It is very, very long. The softcover version of the book is about 600 pages of actual, substantive text, then there are about 100 pages of notes, a bibliography, and an index that pushes it well over 700 pages. And, the font used for the type was very small. Had a larger font that was easier to read been used when the book was printed, it would have been well over 1000 pages.
The book details Oppenheimer's life from his time as a child to his death in 1967. Sometimes it goes into too much detail, a lot of which probably could have been cut out. The book portrays Oppenheimer as someone who was brilliant, but kind of crazy. In some ways, he was a walking contradiction. He was great at physics, but not at math. He was socially awkward but could charm pretty much anyone (and apparently was quite the swordsman with the ladies). He felt the atomic bomb was needed but regretted his role in its creation when he saw the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union take off.
The book is split into several parts, each covering a period of time in Oppenheimer's life, including his childhood, his time as a student and then a teacher, as the leader of the Manhattan Project, being swept up in McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the fallout from having his security clearance taken away, and then the end of his life. I think it will take most people longer to read this book than it would take them to get through a book of equivalent size. I am a very fast reader and most of the time I can get through a 500-600 page book in 6-7 days (sometimes less depending on the book), and this one took me 15 days to finish. So, it is not an easy or quick read. It can be very dry in parts and like I said above, could easily omit some details. But, it is very interesting and worth the time to read or listen to.
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