American Prometheus

What Hacker News says

1. pjmorrisSep 2026
   I agree so strongly that I moved it from my 'to buy' list to bought.

   Also of note is Wellerstein's more recent 'The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age – The Anti-Nuclear President, the Bomb Decision, and Cold War History', which I read earlier this year and thought it was excellent.

   A clipping from its closing pages:

   > “What is the measure of a civilized man?” The proper answer, Lilienthal suggested, was to consider the sense that a “civilized man” was one who believed they had a responsibility to others. The invention of nuclear weapons had clearly magnified the problem: “One sees that the mark of a civilized man must be some quality that will help the world from destroying itself. He is most civilized who has those qualities and talents of leadership, by example and precept and character and ideas, that will help civilization to survive.”

   To extend the reading list, I was completely floored by 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes, but that was 20 years ago. I need to re-read it, and add 'Dark Sun' and 'American Prometheus' to round out that part of my picture of the military-industrial complex.

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2. gwbas1cJan 2025
   American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Marin J. Sherwin

   It is based on ~20 years of research about Robert Oppenheimer, and is the inspiration for the movie Oppenheimer. Robert Oppenheimer is the scientist who lead the development of the first atomic bomb.

   > Less interested in people and character studies. More interested in the mechanics of how things that we take for granted actually got built and what the world they were made in was like.

   In this case, the "people and character studies" are very critical to understanding "the mechanics of how things that we take for granted actually got built and what the world they were made in was like". The early part of the book goes in depth to Oppenheimer's social ties to communist groups, which is critical to understanding the reason why he was forbidden from continuing research in the latter part of his life.

   https://www.amazon.com/American-Prometheus-Triumph-Tragedy-O...

   (To make a long story short, the American Communists, and their sympathizers, in the 1930s were blissfully unaware that the Soviet Union was an authoritarian hellhole. Many of the people involved in the Manhattan project had ties to those American Communists, and thus scientists in the Soviet Union. Because, for them, the Manhattan project was an academic endeavor, they wanted to share their results with their Soviet collogues. And that's how the nuclear race started... Information was leaked to the Soviets in the name of science. Oppenheimer was a victim of the resulting witch hunt; which requires understanding the "people and character studies" part of the book.)

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3. stonlybJan 2025
   list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.

   1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.

   2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.

   3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.

   4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.

   5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.

   6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.

   7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.

   8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.

   9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.

   10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.

   11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.

   12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.

   13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.

   14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.

   15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.

   16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.

   17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.

   18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.

   19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.

   20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.

   21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.

   22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.

   23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.

   24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.

   25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.

   26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.

   27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.

   28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.

   29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.

   30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.

   31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.

   32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.

   33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.

   34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.

   35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.

   36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.

   37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.

   38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.

   39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.

   40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.

   41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.

   42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.

   43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.

   44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.

   45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.

   46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.

   47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.

   48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.

   49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.

   50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.

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4. basementcatAug 2024
   A few that haven’t been mentioned:

   Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is a historical fiction story about the mathematicians and engineers who tried to optimize the Soviet economy.

   The Neverending Story by Michael Ende is much deeper and more interesting than any of the theatrical versions. Reminiscent of the Matrix sequels, the Childlike Empress threatens to crash Fantastica with a stack overflow (via infinite recursion) to force Bastian to give her a name.

   American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin goes into much more detail than the film (Oppenheimer).

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5. freedombenAug 2024
   I'm about an hour into "The Making of the Atomic Bomb"! Great so far.

   I recently finished "American Prometheus" the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and it was phenomenal. I recommend it highly. It's a great different perspective on the story of the making of the bomb since it's more focused on the man's life. Really cool.

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6. ioblomovFeb 2024
   American Prometheus revealed the most compelling reason for using both bombs I’ve seen to date:

     Truman had extracted a promise from Stalin that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan by August 15—an event that he and many of his military planners thought would be decisive. “He’ll [Stalin] be in the Jap war on August 15,” Truman wrote in his diary on July 17. “Fini Japs when that comes about.”
   

   Even more than avoiding a bloody island-hopping invasion of Japan, Truman wanted to avoid having to divide East Asia with the USSR as they had done Europe. The Soviets declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on August 7, one day after Hiroshima and two days before Nagasaki. By August 15, the Japanese had surrendered, largely limiting the Soviet sphere of influence to mainland Asia.
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