The book project on American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who became renowned as the "father of the atomic bomb," was eventually signed by historian Martin Sherwin on March 13, 1980. But the book had not been published 20 years later. Sherwin may have had biographer's illness since he had to go through 50,000 pages of archive material and more than 150 interviews, according to Kai Bird, his co-author on the project.

Bird, a close friend, was first hesitant to join Sherwin but ultimately agreed to do so.
The outcome of their partnership is the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which served as the inspiration for the Oscar–winning picture directed by Christopher Nolan.
Sherwin died in October 2021, two weeks after it was announced that Nolan would be in charge of the ambitious project. But Bird has seen a book come to life that was thought to be tough to adapt into a movie. Raised in the Middle East, Bird is a historian and biographer. His 2010 book Crossing Mandelbaum Gate details his own intriguing journey through the region. Bird is regarded as one of the world's finest biographers, having chronicled the lives of the Bundy brothers and US President Jimmy Carter. Bird discusses extensively on the difficulty of writing biographies and the reasons why Oppenheimer struck a chord with a broad audience in an exclusive interview with wknd. Excerpts edited from an interview:

What would you say about your early years spent in the Middle East? In what ways did you comprehend this world as a "outsider"?

My early years were spent in the Middle East. We relocated every two to three years around the Middle East, from Jerusalem to Beirut to Cairo, thanks to my father's career as a foreign services officer. We had to flee many times throughout the course of these years due to various battles. Since I was an American living abroad, I was privileged to witness all of the horrors that were taking on in the area. I knew about the terrible situation facing the Palestinian refugees and their struggle. However, when returning to the United States for my undergraduate education, I encountered a young lady who was the sole offspring of two Holocaust survivors. Eventually, she married me. She helped me see things from a different angle. a justification for my efforts to understand all viewpoints.

When you returned to the Middle East as a reporter years later, how did it change your perspective on the area compared to that of a young American boy growing up there?

I had always been interested in the area. I was attempting to find out more about the region's true history as a young reporter. This inspired me to create a book, which is based on my recollections and the communication between my parents, about my childhood experiences in the Middle East. However, it was a chance for me to explain a great deal of intricate history. Memoirs are a very effective way to communicate not just a personal narrative but also challenging historical events. Despite being published in 2010, the book Crossing Mandelbaum Gate remains relevant in light of the ongoing conflict and tragedy in Gaza. The publishers have made the decision to release an updated version with a fresh introduction.

You describe the necessity of "protecting my Middle East from my America" in an intriguing manner. Why is it deemed necessary to do so?

It is very evident that America has a significant impact in the Middle East, which is why I stated that. However, Americans are ignorant about the area. Occasionally, when we step in, the situation gets worse. There's a part of me that believes the area would be far better off without US and other foreign nations meddling. Politics is a complicated field. I have a deep emotional and passionate attachment to the Middle East and worry about what America could do to it.

You've penned multiple bios. How difficult is it to get into someone else's shoes, understand their complexities, and write objectively about him?

Indeed, biographies are extremely potent forms of art. However, writing the intricate life narrative of another human being is really challenging. You must enter another person's mind, whether they are living or deceased. It is a great challenge for the biographer to write a tale that makes the reader want to read on. A biographer, however, is not able to remain impartial. It's my narrative about Jimmy Carter or J. Robert Oppenheimer; it's a subjective art form.

A novelist is penning a biography that has several footnotes. You have an agreement with your reader that you are attempting to build trust with, thus every fact and statement has to be cited. As a biographer, you have to convince your reader that you are using sound judgement when you decide what matters most in this life and tale. It's a very fine line to walk because, while you are telling the truth, you are unable to give the full reality of another person's life due to its complexity.
Because it's a challenging task, some biographies need at least five years, and perhaps ten. Although it is a laborious sort of academia, it is an artistic undertaking that is subjective.

That being said, which of the biographies you have written has proven to be the most difficult?

Every biography has unique difficulties. The subject of my first biography was a formidable Wall Street attorney. I worked on writing for ten years. However, I was overwhelmed by the millions of pages of documentation I had to go through for my most recent book on Jimmy Carter. More than two million pages of officially classified documents may be found in his presidential library. There's no way you could read all that. Thus, it required six years and was rather challenging.

In hindsight, I have to say that American Prometheus—the novel that served as the inspiration for the movie Oppenheimer—was the most challenging biography. You are writing about a scientist who had a complex personality and passed away a long time ago. It took 25 years to write the book.

Martin Sherwin, one of my coauthors, conducted research for twenty years before I joined him and contributed five more years to the effort. The plot revolves on the dawn of the atomic era, which is still with us today. In this work, which focuses on science and politics, Oppenheimer falls prey to the McCarthy persecution. It is also a highly intimate account of Oppenheimer's love life and politics.
The subject of my upcoming biography is Roy Cohn, who served as Senator Joseph McCarthy's main legal advisor before going on to become the head attorney for Donald Trump, a real estate developer in New York (laughs). Known for taking short cuts, Roy Cohn was charged with bribery and other offences four times but was never found guilty. It's not necessary to be in love with your subject to be a biographer; instead, you must go to great lengths to comprehend them in order to explain to your reader why they acted the way they did.

How do you pick the topics you study?

Since I know I would be living with this other person for a long time, I chose them very carefully. You must possess a strong curiosity for their life narrative. Simultaneously, you hope that the book will find a readership and become a profitable endeavour, and that the plot will captivate other readers. It requires careful balancing. I chose my subjects mostly because I'm curious about them. Jimmy Carter has always captivated me because I saw his administration as a turning moment from the considerably more conservative Reagan period to traditional Democratic liberal politics. I was curious as to how a little-known Georgian peanut farmer ended up in office. He had a strong religious conviction and gave off the impression of being a politician but not a politician.

You stated After studying J. Robert Oppenheimer for twenty years, Martin Sherwin came to you because he believed he had a "biographer's disease." In what way did you organise the pre-existing material?
After going through every archive, Marty conducted 150 interviews. He amassed 50,000 pages of archive material—a veritable gold mine. Sitting down to write with him was somewhat difficult. Since a biography is a life story, a biographer's framework is often straightforward: a chronology. Sometimes you do defy that norm in order to organise the content. Marty and I selected the things that were significant in Oppenheimer's life for the book.
Being the father of the atomic bomb and the scientific head of Los Alamos, a covert city that produced the bomb used on two Japanese cities, Oppenheimer's tale piqued our curiosity. Then we realised that the narrative followed an arc that was centred not only on his work at Los Alamos but also on his triumph in 1945 as the most well-known scientist in America and his downfall nine years later at a kangaroo court, where he was humiliated and ultimately had his security clearance revoked.
He was a well-known public intellectual who frequently spoke out against the dangers of the atomic bomb, but all of a sudden he became a political outcast. He withdraws into his own world. We were interested in that part of the narrative. Marty once told me that if the tale was merely about Oppenheimer's success in developing the atomic bomb and the tragedy that followed, we wouldn't have spent all these years working on it. The story's most significant element concerned his experiences in 1954 as a victim of the McCarthy period. That Christopher Nolan's movie genuinely captures the decisions we made as biographers makes me extremely happy. It does an excellent job at reflecting the text.
When did you recognise that Christopher Nolan was leading this enormous project, and that it was in capable hands?
The book was published in 2005. In 2006, a Hollywood filmmaker who had spent four years attempting to create it really put it up for sale. Then, after four years of attempts, a different party arrived and failed. I tell you this only to emphasise what a tremendous accomplishment it was for Nolan to be able to take this intricate historical narrative and turn it into a new kind of art form.

I was contacted by Nolan in September of 2021. He told me that he had been writing a screenplay for the previous four or five months and wasn't ready to share it when he asked me to a meeting in New York. However, he was open to answering any queries I had regarding what was and wasn't included in the script. I asked him some questions and discovered that he was heavily focused on the 1953 Oppenheimer trial.
All things considered, he looked to be very unique. He doesn't portray himself as this kind of archetypal Hollywood filmmaker. He is intensely serious, reserved, clever, and emotionally astute. He doesn't have any fluff. Having read the book several times, he was aware of the significance of the narrative. I was therefore really hopeful that something would finally happen when I left the meeting. He shared the script a few months later, and it was engrossing and emotionally compelling. Upon viewing the movie at last, I was astounded by the filmmaker's skill and how, in under three hours, he was able to capture every significant aspect of the Oppenheimer narrative.

Despite the fact that it is never depicted in the movie, several viewers felt that a J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic would also celebrate the development of the atomic bomb. As a writer of Oppenheimer's life story, what do you think of this?

I could see why some were afraid it would glorify this horrible weapon of immense devastation. However, having read the screenplay and seen the movie, I was certain that most people would leave the cinema upset, asking numerous questions about history, such as whether the bomb was essential to end the war and what it meant for our contemporary circumstances. After viewing this film, a lot of people were reminded of the conflict in Ukraine, where there have been several subtly expressed threats to use tactical nuclear weapons. The movie emphasises how, after 75 years of atomic bomb living, humanity has grown accustomed to its situation. We believe that since it occurred so long ago, it won't occur again.The risks of residing near a bomb are amply illustrated in both the book and the movie.

Additionally, I am aware that the film has faced criticism for failing to accurately portray the experiences of the Hiroshima and Naga Saki victims. However, I respect Christopher Nolan's creative choice to refrain from doing so as it would have removed the audience from the present. The story of the movie is portrayed instead from Oppenheimer's perspective. Nolan intended for Oppenheimer to be seen watching news images of Hiroshima. You witness him flinching as he becomes visibly upset by what he is seeing. Comparably, in another moment in the movie, he is making his victory speech when he experiences hallucinations in which he sees the melting of a woman's face.That illustrates how serious the issue is.

You discuss "the need for scientists as public intellectuals" in one of your earliest essays for The New York Times. Do you think it's more crucial than ever to provide men and women in science a voice in public discourse, given the current developments in the artificial intelligence (AI) field?

The whole human race is immersed in science and technology at this point in time. The world is evolving rather quickly. Artificial Intelligence will transform our economics and interpersonal communication. Sadly, scientists have been indoctrinated to stay in their specialised fields and avoid engaging in politics or public policy for far too long.

Therefore, scientists who are trained as communicators do not exist. This is particularly regrettable as the general public is unaware of the options available to us and their ramifications. To control science and technology, we need scientists to be able to explain the decisions made. We must be allowed to question these scientists about the decisions we must make. I believe artificial intelligence (AI) has a lot of promise to assist mankind, but it might also come with a lot of costs and responsibilities that we could avoid if we had a thoughtful conversation about it.