American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER
Comments:
American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Marin J. Sherwin
It is based on ~20 years of research about Robert Oppenheimer, and is the inspiration for the movie Oppenheimer. Robert Oppenheimer is the scientist who lead the development of the first atomic bomb.
> Less interested in people and character studies. More interested in the mechanics of how things that we take for granted actually got built and what the world they were made in was like.
In this case, the "people and character studies" are very critical to understanding "the mechanics of how things that we take for granted actually got built and what the world they were made in was like". The early part of the book goes in depth to Oppenheimer's social ties to communist groups, which is critical to understanding the reason why he was forbidden from continuing research in the latter part of his life.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Prometheus-Triumph-Tragedy-O...
(To make a long story short, the American Communists, and their sympathizers, in the 1930s were blissfully unaware that the Soviet Union was an authoritarian hellhole. Many of the people involved in the Manhattan project had ties to those American Communists, and thus scientists in the Soviet Union. Because, for them, the Manhattan project was an academic endeavor, they wanted to share their results with their Soviet collogues. And that's how the nuclear race started... Information was leaked to the Soviets in the name of science. Oppenheimer was a victim of the resulting witch hunt; which requires understanding the "people and character studies" part of the book.)