The Book Behind Oppenheimer

I’ve always been curious about what it feels like for an author to see their work translated into another medium. The question seems particularly interesting with a film like Oppenheimer, the biopic directed by Christopher Nolan that opened in theaters this week. It tells the life story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” and is based on a mammoth, Pulitzer Prize–winning 2005 biography that took 25 years to research and write. American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is more than 700 pages long; at first glance, it’s difficult to imagine how a book this granular about a subject this complex became a movie. Sadly, Sherwin passed away two years ago, but Bird was able to have the uncanny experience of “meeting” Oppenheimer while visiting the set of Nolan’s film. I talked with him about this encounter and about his book’s path to Hollywood.