by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Sevareid, Eric. Small Sounds in the Night: A Collection of Capsule Commentaries on the American Scene. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies (3rd ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Originally published as A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
Shirer, William L. Twentieth-Century Journey: A Native’s Return, 1945–1988. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1990.
Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its E fect on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.
Singer, Gerald, ed. Tales of St. John and the Caribbean. St. John, VI: Sombrero Publishing Co., 2001.
Smith, Alice Kimball. A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America: 1945–47. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965.
———. and Charles Weiner, eds. Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Originally published in 1980 by Harvard University Press.
Smith, Richard Norton. The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.
St. John People: Stories About St. John Residents by St. John Residents. St. John, VI: American Paradise Publishing, 1993.
Steeper, Nancy Cook. Gatekeeper to Los Alamos: The Story of Dorothy Scarritt McKibbin. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 2003.
Stern, Philip M., with Harold P. Green. The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Strauss, Lewis L. Men and Decisions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962.
Szasz, Ferenc Morton. The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1997.
Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: Norton, 2000.
Teller, Edward, and Allen Brown. The Legacy of Hiroshima. New York: Doubleday, 1962.
Teller, Edward, with Judith Shoolery. Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2001.
Terkel, Studs. The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961.
Truman, Harry S. Memoirs by Harry S. Truman. Vol. 1, Year of Decisions, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1955.
———. Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman. Robert H. Ferrell, ed. New York: Penguin, 1982.
Trumpbour, John, ed. How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire. Boston: South End Press, 1989.
United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: Transcript of Hearing Before Personnel Security Board and Texts of Principal Documents and Letters. Foreword by Philip M. Stern. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971 (referred to in endnotes as “JRO hearing”).
Vidal, Gore. Palimpsest: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1995.
Voros, Sandor. American Commissar. Philadelphia: Chilton Company, 1961.
Wang, Jessica. American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Weisskopf, Victor. The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
Werth, Alexander. Russia at War, 1941–1945. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1964.
Wheeler, John Archibald, with Kenneth Ford. Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.
Weinstein, Allen. Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
———. and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era. New York: Random House, 1999.
Wigner, Eugene. The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner as Told to Andrew Szanton. New York: Plenum Press, 1992.
Williams, Robert Chadwell. Klaus Fuchs: Atomic Spy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Wilson, Edmund. The Fifties: From the Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, ed. Leon Edel. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.
Wilson, Jane S. All in Our Time. Chicago: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1974.
Wilson, Jane S., and Charlotte Serber, eds. Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1988.
Wirth, John D., and Linda Harvey Aldrich. Los Alamos: The Ranch School Years, 1917–1943. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
Ybarra, Michael J. Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2004.
Yoder, Edwin M., Jr. Joe Alsop’s Cold War: A Study of Journalistic Influence and Intrigue. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
York, Herbert. The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976, 1989.
Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Major Articles and Dissertations
Alperovitz, Gar, and Kai Bird. “The Centrality of the Bomb,” Foreign Policy, Spring 1994.
Barnett, Lincoln. “J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Life, 10/10/49.
Bernstein, Barton J. “Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking about Tactical Nuclear Weapons,” International Security, vol. 15, Spring 1991. ———. “Four Physicists and the Bomb: The Early Years, 1945–1950,” Historical Studies in Physical Sciences, vol. 18, no. 2, 1988. ———. “Interpreting the Elusive Robert Serber: What Serber Says and What Serber Does Not Explicitly Say,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, vol. 32, no. 3, 2001, pp. 443–86.
———. “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, vol. 12, part 2, 1982.
———. “The Oppenheimer Loyalty-Security Case Reconsidered,” Stanford Law Review, July 1990.
———. “Oppenheimer and the Radioactive-Poison Plan,” Technology Review, May–June 1985.
———. “Reconsidering the Atomic General: Leslie R. Groves,” The Journal of Military History, July 2003. ———. “Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Diplomatic History 17, Winter 1993.
Bernstein, Jeremy. “Profiles: Physicist,” The New Yorker, 10/13/75 and 10/20/75.
Birge, Raymond T. “History of the Physics Department,” vol. 4, “The Decade 1932–1942,” unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.
Boulton, Frank. “Thomas Addis (1881–1949): Scottish Pioneer in Haemophilia Research,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, no. 33, 2003, pp. 135–42.
Bundy, McGeorge. “Early Thoughts on Controlling the Nuclear Arms Race.” International Security, Fall 1982.
———. “The Missed Chance to Stop the H-Bomb,” New York Review of Books, 5/13/82.
Coughlan, Robert. “The Tangled Drama and Private Hells of Two Famous Scientists,” Life, 12/13/63.
———. “The Equivocal Hero of Science: Robert Oppenheimer,” Life, February 1967.
Davis, Harry M. “The Man Who Built the A-Bomb,” New York Times Magazine, 4/18/48.
Day, Michael A. “Oppenheimer on the Nature of Science.” Centaurus, vol. 43, 2001.
“The Eternal Apprentice,” Time, 11/8/48.
Galison, Peter, and Barton J. Bernstein. “In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952–54,” Historical Studies in Physical Sciences, vol. 19.
Gibney, Nancy. “Finding Out Different,” in St. John People: Stories about St. John Residents by St. John Residents. St. John V. I.: American Paradise Publishing, 1993.
Green, Harold P. “The Oppenheimer Case: A Study in the Abuse of Law,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scient
ists, September 1977.
Gundel, Jeremy. “Heroes and Villains: Cold War Images of Oppenheimer and Teller in Mainstream American Magazines,” July 1992, Occasional Paper 92-1, Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center, Tufts University.
Hershberg, James G. “The Jig Was Up: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the International Control of Atomic Energy, 1947–49.” Paper presented at Oppenheimer Centennial Conference, Berkeley, CA, 4/22–24/04.
Hijiya, James A. “The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 144, no. 2, June 2000.
Holton, Gerald. “Young Man Oppenheimer,” Partisan Review, vol. XLVIII, 1981.
Kempton, Murray. “The Ambivalence of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Esquire, December 1983.
Leffler, Melvyn. “Inside Enemy Archives: The Cold War Re-Opened,” Foreign A fairs, Summer 1996.
Lemley, Kevin V., and Linus Pauling. “Thomas Addis,” Biographical Memoirs, vol. 63. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1994.
Morgan, Thomas B. “A Visit with J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Look, 4/1/58. ———. “With Oppenheimer, on an Autumn Day: A Thoughtful Man Talks Searchingly About Science, Ethics, and Nuclear War on a Quiet Afternoon During a Bad Time,” Look, 12/27/66.
Newman, Steven Leonard. “The Oppenheimer Case: A Reconsideration of the Role of the Defense Department and National Security.” Dissertation, New York University, February 1977.
Oppenheimer, Robert. “Niels Bohr and Atomic Weapons,” New York Review of Books, 12/17/64.
———. “On Albert Einstein,” New York Review of Books, 3/17/66.
Preuss, Paul. “On the Blacklist,” Science, June 1983, p. 35.
Rhodes, Richard. “I Am Become Death . . .” American Heritage, vol. 28, no. 6, 1987, pp. 70–83.
Rosenberg, David Alan. “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–60,” International Security, no. 7, Spring 1983.
Sanders, Jane A. “The University of Washington and the Controversy Over J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, January 1979.
Stern, Beatrice M. A History of the Institute for Advanced Study, 1930–1950, p. 613, unpublished manuscript, archives, Institute for Advanced Studies.
Szasz, Ferenc M. “Great Britain and the Saga of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” War in History, vol. 2, no. 3, 1995.
Thorpe, Charles Robert. “J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Transformation of the Scientific Vocation,” Dissertation, UC–San Diego, 2001.
———. and Steven Shapin. “Who Was J. Robert Oppenheimer?” Social Studies of Science, August 2000.
Trilling, Diana. “The Oppenheimer Case: A Reading of the Testimony,” Partisan Review, November–December 1954.
Wilson, Robert. “Hiroshima: The Scientists’ Social and Political Reaction,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, September 1996.
Manuscript Collections
Acheson, Dean (YUL)
Barnard, Chester (Harvard Business School Library)
Baruch, Bernard (PUL)
Bethe, Hans (CUL)
Bohr, Niels (AIP)
Bush, Vannevar (LC and MIT)
Byrnes, James F. (CU)
Clark, Grenville (Dartmouth College)
Clayton, William (HSTL)
Clifford, Clark (HSTL)
Committee to Frame a World Constitution (University of Chicago)
Compton, Arthur (Washington University)
Compton, Karl (MIT)
Conant, James B. (HU)
DuBridge, Lee (Caltech)
Dulles, John Foster (PUL and DDEL)
Eisenhower, Dwight D., Presidential Papers collections (DDEL)
Federation of Atomic Scientists and numerous associated manuscript collections such as
Atomic Scientists of Chicago, Fermi papers and Hutchins papers (University of Chicago)
Forrestal, James (PUL)
Frankfurter, Felix (LC and Harvard Law School)
Groves, Leslie, Record Group (RG) 200, National Archives (NA)
Harriman, Averell (LC and Kai Bird personal archive)
Lamont, Lansing (HSTL)
Lawrence, E. O. (UCB)
Lilienthal, David (PUL)
Lippmann, Walter (YUL)
McCloy, John J. (Amherst College archives)
Niebuhr, Reinhold. (LC)
Oppenheimer, J. Robert (LOC and IAS)
Osborn, Frederick (HSTL)
Patterson, Robert (LC)
Peters, Bernard (Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen)
Roosevelt, Franklin D., Presidential Papers collection (Roosevelt Library)
Stimson, Henry L. (YUL)
Strauss, Lewis L. (HHL)
Szilard, Leo (UCSDL)
Tolman, Richard (Caltech)
Truman, Harry S., Presidential Papers collections (HSTL)
University of Michigan records of the theoretical physics summer schools during the 1930s
Urey, Harold (UCSDL)
Wilson, Carroll (MIT)
Government Document Collections
Atomic Energy Commission, National Archives
Manhattan Engineering District, Harrison-Bundy files, RG 77, NA
National Defense Research Council and Office of Scientific Research and Development, RG 227, NA
Federal Bureau of Investigation records on J. Robert Oppenheimer, FBI Headquarters, Washington, DC (Name files: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Katherine Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer, Haakon Chevalier, and Klaus Fuchs)
Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives, numerous files
Secretary of Defense Papers, RG 330, NA
Secretary of War Papers, RG 107, NA
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, RG 128, NA
Special Committee on Atomic Energy, RG 46, NA
Department of State, AEC files and the records of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for atomic energy matters, RG 50, NA
Interviews
The interviews listed here were conducted by Martin Sherwin (MS), Kai Bird (KB), Jon Else (JE), Alice Kimball Smith (AS), and Charles Weiner (CW). The Sherwin and Bird interview transcripts are in the possession of the authors. The Jon Else interviews were conducted for use in Else’s 1980 documentary film The Day After Trinity—and we are grateful for his permission to quote from them. The Smith and Weiner interviews were conducted in connection with their edited collection of Oppenheimer’s letters, Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections. While Smith and Weiner graciously gave us copies of these interviews for use in this biography, most of their interview transcripts are on file with MIT’s Oral History Program in Cambridge, MA.
Anderson, Carl, 3/31/83 (MS)
Bacher, Jean, 3/29/83 (MS)
Bacher, Robert, 3/29/83 (MS)
Barlas, June, 1/19/82 (MS); 3/28/01 (KB)
Bernheim, Frederic, 10/27/75 (CW)
Bethe, Hans, 7/13/79 (JE); 5/5/82 (MS)
Bohm, David, 6/15/79 (MS)
Boyd, William, 12/21/75 (AS)
Bradbury, Norris, 1/10/85 (MS)
Bundy, McGeorge, 12/2–3/92 (KB)
Chance, Ellen, 5/10/79 (MS)
Cherniss, Harold F., 4/21/76 (AS); 5/23/79 (MS); 11/10/76 (AS)
Chevalier, Haakon, 6/29/82, 7/15/82 (MS)
Chevalier, Haakon, Jr., 3/9/02 (MS)
Christy, Robert, 3/30/83 (MS)
Colgate, Sterling, 11/12/79 (JE)
Compton, Margaret, 4/3/76 (AS)
Crane, Horace Richard, 4/8/83 (MS)
Dale, Betty, 1/21/82 (MS)
Denham, Irva Claire, 1/20/82 (MS)
Denham, John, 1/20/82 (MS)
DeWire, John, 5/5/82 (MS)
DuBridge, Lee, 3/30/83 (MS)
Duffield, Priscilla Greene, 1/2/76 (AS)
Dyer-Bennett, John, 5/15/01 (KB phone interview)
Dyson, Freeman, 12/10/79 (JE); 2/16/84 (MS)
Ecker, Allan, 7/16/91 (MS)
Edsall, John, 7/16/75 (CW)
Edwards, Steve, 1/18/82 (MS)
Ericson, Sabra, 1/13/82 (MS)
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Fergusson, Francis, 4/23/75, 4/21/76 (AS); 6/8/79, 6/18/79, 6/23/79, 7/7/79 (MS)
Fontenrose, Joseph, 3/25/83 (MS)
Fowler, William A., 3/29/83 (MS)
Frank, Sis, 1/18/82 (MS)
Freier, Phyllis, 3/5/83 (MS)
Friedan, Betty, 1/24/01 (KB)
Friedlander, Gerhart, 4/30/02 (MS)
Garrison, Lloyd, 1/31/84 (KB)
Geurjoy, Edward, 6/26/04 (KB)
Gibney, Ed, 3/26/01 (KB)
Gibney, Eleanor, 3/27/01 (KB)
Green, John and Irva, 2/20/82 (MS)
Goldberger, Marvin, 3/28/83 (MS)
Goldberger, Mildred, 3/3/83 (MS)
Gordon, Lincoln, 5/18/04 (KB phone interview)
Hammel, Edward, 1/9/85 (MS)
Hawkins, David, 6/5/82 (MS)
Hempelmann, Louis, MD, 8/10/79 (MS)
Hein, Hilde Stern, 3/11/04 (KB)
Hiilivirta, Inga, 1/16/82 (MS); 3/26/01 (KB)
Hobson, Verna, 7/31/79 (MS)
Horgan, Paul, 3/3/76 (AS)
Jadan, Doris and Ivan, 1/18/82, 3/26/01 (MS); 3/28/01 (KB)
Jenkins, Edith Arnstein, 5/9/02 (interview by Gregg Herken); 7/25/02 (KB phone interview)
Kamen, Martin D., 1/18/79 (MS)
Kayser, Jane Didisheim, 6/4/75 (CW)
Kelman, Dr. Jeffrey, 2/3/01 (KB)
Kennan, George F., 5/3/79 (MS)
Langsdorf, Babette Oppenheimer, 12/1/76 (AS)
Lilienthal, David E., 10/14/78 (MS)
Lomanitz, Rossi, 7/11/79 (MS)
Manfred, Ken Max (Friedman), 1/14/82 (MS)
Manley, John, 1/9/85 (MS)
Mark, J. Carson, 12/19/79 (JE)
Marks, Anne Wilson, 3/5/02, 3/14/02, 5/9/02 (KB)
Marquit, Irwin, 3/6/83 (MS)
McCloy, John J., 7/10/86 (KB)
McKibbin, Dorothy, 1/1/76 (AS); 7/20/79, 12/10/79 (JE)
Motto, Dr. Jerome, 3/14/01 (KB phone interview)
Mirsky, Jeanette, 11/10/76 (AS)
Morrison, Philip, 6/21/02 (MS); 10/17/02 (KB phone interview)
Nedelsky, Leo, 12/7/76 (AS)
Nelson, Steve and Margaret, 6/17/81 (MS)
Nier, Alfred, 3/5/83 (MS)
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 11/18/63 (interview by T. S. Kuhn), AIP, APS
Oppenheimer, Frank, 2/9/73 (CW); 3/17/75, 4/14/76 (AS); 12/3/78 (MS)