The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer – And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race (Johns Hopkins Nuclear History and Contemporary Affairs)

A highly entertaining demolition of Edward Teller, a golden mind poisoned by ego, a genius wrecked by the habits of a flighty dilettante, a celebrated refugee overwhelmed by paranoia, a creative plagiarist and a friend who denied the work of brilliant colleagues and belittled them to ill-informed and shallow-thinking politicians. Poor Robert Oppenheimer is in the supporting cast for much of the narrative.

This well-reasoned, well-researched book pinpoints the exact moment when the Cold War was effected as the dominant foreign and domestic policy of the United States. Politically victorious, but scientifically illiterate, triumphalist politicians and economic leaders are shown to have succumbed to paranoid fears and prospects for endless war profits, and in the process debased the man who had insured the ultimate victory of America over perhaps the darkest military forces ever faced by civilized humans. It is all you need to read to understand American politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

There is no doubt the book is new.However the Hardcover is bent in the middle and at one of the edges.

As promised.