The inspiration for the major motion picture Oppenheimer, this is the definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist

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As Allies thwarted Nazi efforts to build an atomic bomb, Americans rushed to create their own nuclear weapon--unaware that the Soviets were stealing their plans.

"In February 1942, leaders of the Manhattan Project had a problem: to prove a controlled nuclear chain reaction was possible, they needed pure uranium-tons of it and in less than ten months. With only a few grams in existence, there was little hope anyone could achieve such a feat. Harley Wilhelm, a chemistry professor at Iowa State College, rose to the challenge. A sharecropper's son and former college basketball coach, Wilhelm was an unlikely character...

"A compilation of archival film clips beginning with the first atomic bomb detonation in the New Mexico desert. The footage, much of it produced as government propaganda, follows the story of the bomb through the two atomic attacks on Japan that ended World War II to the bomb's central role in the cold war. Shown along with the famous 'duck and cover' Civil Defense films are lesser-known clips, many of which possess a bizarre black humor when seen...

"Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project. Working with some of the age's greatest scientific minds, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard, Charlie is assigned the task of designing and building the detonator of the atomic bomb. As he performs that work Charlie suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda--unaware of the true...

On August 6, 1945, the United States of America dropped the world's first atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, a decision that ushered in the nuclear age and marked the end of World War II. When the atomic bomb exploded at 8:15 A.M., 70,000 people were killed instantly. Thousands more were dead of radiation sickness within weeks. More still were sick, scarred, and deformed for the rest of their lives by the chemicals in the bomb. Three...

Documents the Allied raid against occupied Norway's Vermork hydroelectric plant, the world's only supplier of an essential ingredient needed by the Nazis to build an atomic bomb, citing the teamwork of British Special Ops, a brilliant scientists and refugee Norwegian commandos that foiled Hitler's nuclear ambitions.

Washington, DC, 1945. Lieutenant Ellis Voigt of the Office of Naval Intelligence is desperate to keep the secrets that threaten his life. The war overseas is going well for America, but Voigt can't escape a web of double-agents and undercover spies who follow his every move. The FBI suspects that he is the communist who murdered a Naval officer in a Washington back alley. The Soviets believe he's holding back information from their contacts, and they're...