The unexplored secret of the American Century, the last 100 years of UShistory, is the rise of American science, specifically physics. At the heart of thatstory is J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project that built theatomic bomb. He was a man of contradictions: a scientist who discovered blackholes and then turned his back on cutting edge research; a gentle liberalhumanist responsible for the creation of the first real weapon of massdestruction; a genius who founded "scientific militarism" and then let it destroyhim. His life story embodies the great conflicts of American society, its genius,its weaknesses, and even its essential morality.How did an aesthete man uninterested in the acquisition of power become theleader of American science, the most powerful research community in theworld? And how did he, with all his intellectual and social advantages, lose hispower and become regarded by many as an unfulfilled if not failed scientist.While it is biography of a physicist, it is also a history of the 20th centuryoffering insights into the "scientific militarism" behind events on the worldstage today.