Kai Bird

Oppenheimer concluded that such “follies can occur only when even the men who know the facts can find no one to talk about them, when the facts are too secret for discussion, and thus for thought.”

that “atomic weapons strongly favor the side that attacks aggressively and by surprise. This the United States will never do; and let me point out that we never had any of this hysterical fear of any nation until atomic weapons appeared upon the scene.” Later in his presidency, Eisenhower would feel compelled to rebuke a panel of hawkish advisers, caustically observing, “You can’t have this kind of war. There just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”

When he married Carol Lansburgh, a thirty-two-year-old native of California, the Oppenheimers sent them a mahogany salad bowl from the Virgin Islands as a wedding gift.