The Book Behind <em>Oppenheimer</em>

This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.

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 , 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. , 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