Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Atomic Age (BRAND NEW CLASS!)
Dr. Allen Pietrobon is an Assistant Professor and Program Chair of the Global Affairs department at Trinity Washington University. An award-winning historian and public speaker, Allen specializes in 20th-Century American history and U.S. Foreign Policy, focusing on nuclear weapons policies and Cold War diplomacy. Since 2011, he has also served as an Assistant Director of Research at the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. His latest book, Norman Cousins: Peacemaker in the Atomic Age, explores the widespread influence that prominent journalist Norman Cousins had on postwar international humanitarian aid, anti-nuclear advocacy, and Cold War diplomacy, including secret diplomatic missions he conducted behind the Iron Curtain.
Overview
Historian and biographer Allen Pietrobon jumps back to the dawn of the Atomic Age to explore the Manhattan Project and the personalities behind it. He examines the state of science in the first half of the 20th century in order to dive deeply into the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the world-changing weapon he helped build.
Weaving fascinating stories of what it was like to work at Los Alamos and the challenges the scientists encountered as they raced to get a bomb before Hitler’s Germany did, Pietrobon explores what made Oppenheimer famous.