What Book Inspired Oppenheimer Movie? Read American Prometheus Online
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Oppenheimer was the big winner at the 2024 Golden Globes, taking home five wins, including Best Picture (Drama).The highly-anticipated film, directed by Christopher Nolan, revolves around the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the godfather of the atomic bomb.”
Oppenheimer contended for the summer box office crown with Barbie, while writer-director Nolan, and star Cillian Murphy, are pegged as awards season frontrunners.
While Nolan wrote the Oppenheimer screenplay on his own, he drew inspiration from American Prometheus, a 2005 biography on Oppenheimer that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The book has roared back to number one on Amazon’s science charts, as audiences look to read the story behind the new film.
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American Prometheus
Officially titled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the book was co-authored by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, two researchers who have covered World War II and Hiroshima, specifically, for decades.
The book is considered by many to be the definitive biography of Oppenheimer, tracing his career from his early life in New York City, to his formative years attending school in Europe, to the fortuitous chain of events that led the theoretical physicist to becoming director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during WWII.
Originally published by Vintage Books in 2005, Amazon has the reprint edition available right now for $15.99 online. The 721-page book is available on paperback and Kindle.
You can also listen to the Oppenheimer book on Audible, with American Prometheus narrated by Audie Award winner, Jeff Cummings. Use Audible’s current free trial offer to listen to the Oppenheimer audiobook online for free here. You can also download it for $26.
American Prometheus
Nolan has high praise for the book, calling it “A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”
The publisher’s notes, meantime, herald American Prometheus as “the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” calling it “a rich evocation of America at midcentury, a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events-the Depression, World War II and the Cold War.”
Oppenheimer Screenplay
Read the book behind Oppenheimer now on Kindle or by purchasing a copy for $15.99 on Amazon. The site also has the official Oppenheimer screenplay available for $10.95 here.
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