The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Lindsey Michael Banco

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Pub Date May 15 2016 | Archive Date May 13 2016

University of Iowa Press | The New American Canon

History | Science

Description

He called the first atomic bomb “technically sweet,” yet as he watched its brilliant light explode over the New Mexico desert in 1945 in advance of the black horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he also thought of the line from the Hindu epic The Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the single most recognizable face of the atomic bomb, and a man whose name has become almost synonymous with Cold War American nuclear science, was and still is a conflicted, controversial figure who has come to represent an equally ambivalent technology.

The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer examines how he has been represented over the past seven decades in biographies, histories, fiction, comics, photographs, film, television, documentaries, theater, and museums. Lindsey Michael Banco gathers an unprecedented group of cultural texts and seeks to understand the multiple meanings Oppenheimer has held in American popular culture since 1945. He traces the ways these representations of Oppenheimer have influenced public understanding of the atomic bomb, technology, physics, the figure of the scientist, the role of science in war, and even what it means to pursue knowledge of the world around us. Questioning and unpacking both how and why Oppenheimer is depicted as he is across time and genre, this book is broad in scope, profound in detail, and offers unique insights into the rise of nuclear culture and how we think about the relationship between history, imagination, science, and nuclear weapons today.

Advance Praise

“Robert Oppenheimer is endlessly fascinating. His life engaged the most profound issues of our time: the revolution in physics, the Great Depression, the Popular Front, the development of nuclear weapons, and the corrosive influence of the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s. Lindsey Banco expands our understanding of his influence by investigating his ‘meaning’ to our political culture. It is another important contribution to the Oppenheimer Library.”—Martin J. Sherwin, coauthor, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography

“The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer is an intriguing book about an important issue and an equally important person. It complements and builds on existing scholarship on Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, and is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in Cold War America, the Manhattan Project, and the enigmatic figure that is Oppenheimer.”—Allan M. Winkler, Miami University of Ohio

“Oppenheimer has always been the ghostly presence behind nuclear culture in the United States, and Banco has done him a great service by thinking about him in all his ambivalent and paradoxical brilliance. Far afield from conventional biographies, The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer explores the man and the idea of the man as a series of dualities, showing how a retiring physicist who went to the desert wound up setting the terms for so many aspects of postwar culture. A unique contribution to Cold War studies.”—Steven Belletto, author, No Accident, Comrade: Chance and Design in Cold War American Narratives

Available Editions

EDITION	Paperback
ISBN	9781609384197
PRICE	$22.50 (USD)

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Featured Reviews

Darren I, Media/Journalist

Maybe the name does not ring a bell, yet J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues certainly left a legacy to the world as one of the fathers of the atomic bomb. This book is a fascinating, if not heavy going, look at the life and times of Oppenheimer and considers how he has been represented in the media, books and the like over time.

This book is careful to point out that this is not a biography of Oppenheimer or a history of the Manhattan Project, but it seeks to examine Oppenheimer as a “principal metaphor” through a wide range of cultural productions that “depict the ambivalences and paradoxes of the nuclear age.”

As you may expect, the book is rounded off by a very extensive series of notes and a comprehensive bibliography, so those who need to dig further into the source documents can do it with ease.

It won’t appeal to everybody – it is far from being a general read, something you might just pick up off the library shelf and take home – yet if you are prepared to take a gamble and persevere it can be very giving. If you have a specific need for this sort of information, it is capable of being a vital resource – it is clearly aimed towards the academic reader and it serves this audience well. Yet as a curious, general reader it was very engaging and illuminating, even when the mind decided that bits needed to be skipped as it went into too much arcane detail about something or another.

The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Lindsey Michael Banco and published by University of Iowa Press. ISBN 9781609384197. YYYY

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Cozy Book R, Reviewer

This is not a bio, it is a vital work that encompasses the works of Dr. Oppenheimer as well as all that has been written about him over the years. It is concise and wide ranging in its scope of information. I highly recommend if you are just a layperson or a student of history this is a excellent guide to this important figure in history.