Book ID: CBB810593164

Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist (2017)

unapi

Conant, Jennet (Author)


Simon & Schuster


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 608
Language: English

James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in World War I. As a controversial president of Harvard University, he was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions. As an advisor to FDR, he led the interventionist cause for US entrance in World War II. During that war, Conant was the administrative director of the Manhattan Project, oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and argued that it be used against the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. Later, he urged the Atomic Energy Commission to reject the hydrogen bomb, and devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for international control of atomic weapons. As Eisenhower’s high commissioner to Germany, he helped to plan German recovery and was an architect of the United States’ Cold War policy. Now New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant recreates the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century as her grandfather James experienced them. She describes the guilt, fears, and sometimes regret of those who invented and deployed the bombs and the personal toll it took. From the White House to Los Alamos to Harvard University, Man of the Hour is based on hundreds of documents and diaries, interviews with Manhattan Projects scientists, Harvard colleagues, and Conant’s friends and family, including her father, James B. Conant’s son. This is a very intimate, up-close look at some of the most argued cases of modern times—among them the use of chemical weapons, the decision to drop the bomb, Oppenheimer’s fate, the politics of post-war Germany and the Cold War—the repercussions of which are still affecting our world today.

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Reviewed By

Essay Review Naomi Pasachoff (2018) James B. Conant and the Fulfillment of Three Life Ambitions. Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 241-246). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB810593164/

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Authors & Contributors
Cioci, Vincenzo
Edward P.F. Rose
Bini, Elisabetta
Hoerlin, Bettina
Vezzosi, Elisabetta
Michiel Horn
Concepts
World War II
Science and war; science and the military
Cold War
World War I
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Biographies
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Great Britain
Soviet Union
Europe
Hiroshima-shi (Japan)
Arctic regions
Institutions
Harvard University
Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)
University of Pennsylvania
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