Carleton Voice
Fall 2006

Brother In Arms
J. Robert Oppenheimer's tumultuous life is the subject of a new
Pultizer Prize-winning biography by historian and writer Kai Bird '73.

By Meleah Maynard

Kai Bird ‘73 was casting about for a new book idea six years ago when his longtime friend Martin Sherwin asked whether he’d be interested in collaborating on a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. It was a tricky proposition, Bird says, because writing a book together might not be conducive to their friendship.

Further complicating matters, Sherwin had been working on the book since 1979. In that time he had gathered more than a hundred transcribed interviews and culled facts from armloads of historical documents. He also had developed a bad case of “biographer’s disease,” as Bird calls it. “It’s common when you do a book like this. Marty just couldn’t stop researching and start writing,” Bird says. “He came to me and said, ‘Kai, if you don’t join me, my gravestone will read: 'He took it with him.’ “

Despite his reservations, Bird teamed with Sherwin to write American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). The collaboration not only strengthened their friendship, it won them the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography. “It was amazing to win,” Bird says. “I didn’t even know we were one of the three books that had been nominated, and then Marty called to say he’d just heard from our publisher that we’d won the Pulitzer.”

It took five years for the pair to finish the book, which also won the National Book Award for biography. During that time, the book was a constant part of Bird’s life. By day, he surrounded himself with pictures of Oppenheimer. At night, the charismatic scientist visited Bird in his dreams. “Oppenheimer is endlessly fascinating,” says Bird. “He was a physicist who loved French literature. He’s the father of the atomic bomb,’ yet he was conflicted about how it was used.”

After hearing so much about Oppenheimer’s triumphs and troubles, Bird’s wife, Susan Goldmark ‘75, came up with the book’s title with the help of a friend. “She also made a rule that I could tell her only one Oppenheimer story a day,” Bird says, “and it had to be one she hadn’t heard already.”

The couple’s 13-year-old son, Joshua, did his part to help, too. After finishing the manuscript, Bird asked Joshua to read it aloud to him so he could tell which parts needed to be cut. “He said, 'Okay, but I want five dollars a chapter,’ “ Bird says.

An acclaimed historian, Bird wrote several books before this latest one, including The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (Simon & Schuster, 1998) and The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment (Simon & Schuster, 1992). He is also a contributing editor to The Nation, a longstanding progressive political and cultural journal.

Bird met Goldmark when they were both Carleton undergrads studying history. Both were interested in the Middle East and India. “We had a class with a difficult history professor,” Bird says. “Susan got an A and I got a B, so I was impressed with her.” After graduation, Bird received the coveted Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which enables students to do a year of independent study outside the United States. He used the fellowship to do a photojournalism project in Yemen. Two years later, Goldmark was awarded the same fellowship and the two of them spent 15 months as freelance journalists traveling through Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. “We filed weekly stories with papers like the Christian Science Monitor and Hong Kong’s Far Eastern Economic Review,” Bird says. “We hardly made any money, but we enjoyed what we were doing.”

After returning to the United States, Bird earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University and worked for a short time as a writer for Newsweek before starting a four-year stint as foreign editor for The Nation. He shifted gears in 1982 to spend half a decade as a regular columnist for The Nation. “After that I got this notion that I needed to start writing books,” he says. “So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

Bird is currently at work on a new book, a memoir about his childhood, spent in the Middle East, where his father worked as a Foreign Service officer. “It’s a chance for me to use my personal experience growing up in the Arab world to try to explain some of why we are in such trouble there now in the post-9/11 world,” he says.

Meleah Maynard is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis.

© Meleah Maynard