The Chicago Tufts Alliance is pleased to host

Martin Sherwin discussing
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Date & Time:
Saturday, December 8, 2007
5:00 pm – Registration
5:30 pm – Presentation and reading
6:15 pm – Reception and book signing

Location: TBD

Contact:
For more information about this event, contact gretchen.dobson@tufts.edu or call 1-800-THE-ALUM (843-2586)

About the book:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a compelling, dramatic biography of the rise and fall of "the father of the atom bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory where the first atomic bombs were produced. The book received the 2006 English Speaking Union Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for biography, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for best biography of the year. "It’s the story," says Sherwin, "of a remarkable human being who was involved in some of the most important developments of the twentieth century—the creation and use of the atomic bomb and the role nuclear weapons would play in the world after World War II, as well as the politics of the Great Depression and the dark days of McCarthyism. It raises questions about science, public policy, and national security issues that resonate today."

About the author:
Martin J. Sherwin is the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History, Emeritus. He taught at Tufts from 1980 to 2007. He earned his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and his PhD in history from UCLA. He joined Tufts in 1980 after a distinguished career at the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1985 he founded the Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center at Tufts and two years later also produced the Global Classroom Project, an international television-based course that linked students in his class at Tufts with students in Moscow via satellite TV and simultaneous interpretation. The programs (1988-1992) were broadcast throughout the Soviet Union and on selected PBS stations in the United States.

He is also the author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, a Pulitzer Prize finalist that won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize. One of Tufts' most popular teachers, he was a two-time recipient of a Professor of the Year Silver Medal from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). His other awards include being named a UNESCO Distinguished Professor for Humanities, Mendeleyev University, Moscow, in 1995, and winning Guggenheim, NEH, Rockefeller, and MacArthur fellowships. He is an elected member of the Society of American Historians and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.