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The movie was based in large part on the book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" Which is a life of the man, as you say.
by SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
The movie was based in large part on the book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer"
Which is a life of the man, as you say.
The main difference from the movie is that, aside from being much more lengthy, as book vs. movie always is, it dwells more on pre-WW2 California leftist politics. Whereas the downfall of Lewis Strauss gets only a brief mention.
And of course it covers the life of J R Oppenheimer from birth to death in detail, in parts exhaustive detail.
- pests 3y agoOh interesting, thanks. I missed Oppenheimer in IMAX the first time around but saw it finally a month or two ago when it was re-released. I had originally been reading Rhodes's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" leading up to the release - I timed it to where I stopped reading right at the part Trinity went off at, saw the movie, and just recently finished. So thanks for the rec.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y agoTBH there were parts of that book where I felt I had had my fill long before the book let go - (e.g. the above-mentioned pre-WW2 California leftist politics) but YMMV, and it's a true history book, not a novel designed to thrill. And there were fascinating engineering problem-solving details that were entirely absent e.g. the lengths gone to to get the shaped charges for the implosion device correct, and to run the punched-card computing for that. See Feynman's anecdotes on it instead. But on the whole, it's a fascinating book if you're into that sort of thing.