About this item
Two ambitious men. One historic mission.With a blinding flash in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1945, the world was changed forever. The bomb that ushered in the atomic age was the product of one of history's most improbable partnerships. The General and the Genius reveals how two extraordinary men pulled off the greatest scientific feat of the twentieth century. Leslie Richard Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers, who had made his name by building the Pentagon in record time and under budget, was made overlord of the impossibly vast scientific enterprise known as the Manhattan Project. His mission: to beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. So he turned to the nation's preeminent theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer - the chain-smoking, martini-quaffing son of wealthy Jewish immigrants, whose background was riddled with communist associations - Groves's opposite in nearly every respect.
About the Author
James Kunetka is one of the nation's leading historians on America's early atomic history. His nonfiction books range from the story of Los Alamos during WWII to a political history of scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is also the author of four novels.
