BOOK HITS CRITICAL MASS

American historian and biographer Kai Bird was recently in Shanghai to promote the Chinese edition of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Over the past six months, the 72-year-old also traveled to Italy and Britain to discuss his 2005 biography of the theoretical physicist, also known as "the father of the atomic bomb".

Bird co-authored the book with the late historian Martin J. Sherwin. Sherwin initiated the biography project in 1980 and spent the following 20 years doing research and interviews. He later realized that, without additional help, his undertaking would be "a Sisyphean operation", (unfinished) so he invited Bird to join him in writing the book in 2000.

The 700-page book is centered on stories from Oppenheimer's life interwoven with science, World War II, and Cold War politics.

The book has won several accolades, including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for a Biography or Autobiography. Despite these achievements, it was not a bestseller until recently.

"The Pulitzer is a big thing, and it's very nice to win that prize, as it helped to sell more books. But still it sold modestly," Bird says in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

"It never got on the The New York Times bestseller list or elsewhere. It stayed in print. I was kind of disappointed that it didn't get a wider readership."

While it had also been optioned many times for a movie, every attempt failed until the most recent effort by Christopher Nolan.

Following the release of Nolan's film Oppenheimer in July, the book finally found its way into The New York Times bestseller list. In fact, the book is still there today, five months on. The three-hour movie has also become the most successful biopic ever — its box office takings just two months after its release amounted to a whopping $913 million globally.

Bird admits he wasn't fully prepared for the movie's success. In fact, he even doubted if Hollywood was capable of making such a film in the first place.

"Before Nolan called, we had sort of given up. We thought this was never going to happen. This story — it's too complicated," Bird says.

It was not until he read Nolan's script, which he described as "brilliant" and a "faithful" adaptation of the book, that Bird began to feel hopeful.

"It did justice to the two main storylines — the scientific triumph that Oppenheimer had in building the weapon, and the tragedy that Oppenheimer was terribly wounded by what happened in 1954," Bird says. That year the United States Atomic Energy Commission investigated Oppenheimer and removed his security clearance.

But the biographer was still skeptical that the film would be a hit with the audiences, citing how most young Americans had never heard of Oppenheimer.

"I assume most Chinese had never heard about him either," he says. "Why would the younger generation go to see a movie about an unknown scientist?"

As it turned out, the film's success has had a knock-on effect on the book. In fact, the effect has been so pronounced that the book has since been published in more foreign languages.

Bird points out that while biographies shed light into a particular person's life, some things in the book are subjective and do not represent the absolute truth.

"Biographers should be the first to admit that what they write is subjective. It's their point of view about a person's life," he explains.

"Our motivation as biographers was to use Oppenheimer's life to convey both the fascination we had with his personal life, and the larger history of what he lived through, and to address some of the big questions like, was the atomic bomb necessary to end the war? How do we think about nuclear weapons today? Can we live with the bomb?"

Bird says that both he and Sherwin agreed that what makes the story of Oppenheimer interesting is that he was tried and "destroyed" in the security hearing in 1954 despite his achievements.

"He was a great public intellectual. Yet he was disinvited from even given speeches at universities," Bird says, adding that it's a tragedy that resonates today because we are living "another Oppenheimer moment" when dealing with artificial intelligence, a new, unchartered territory of science and technology.

"We need scientists to explain some of the choices that we should be thinking about, yet we don't have scientific heroes any longer," he says. "Some 70 or 80 years ago, we revered scientists, we revered Albert Einstein. For a time, we revered Oppenheimer. We respected them. We listened to them. But today I don't think we have anybody like that.

"I think one of the reasons is that in 1954, we destroyed Oppenheimer in the secret hearing, and that sent a message to scientists, warning them not to step out of their narrow lane of expertise and pretend that they could become public intellectuals," he adds.

"That's one of the reasons why the book and the movie have resonated with people. We need more Oppenheimers."