About the Author

Edward Teller was born in Hungary in 1908 and educated in Germany. He came to the Unit ed States in 1935. A theoretical physicist, he wor ked on nuclear weapons during and after World War II, and was instrumental in the development of the hydrogen bomb. A staunch advocate of national mil itary preparedness, Teller has been involved in se veral controversies, most recently the debate rega rding national missile defense. He helped found La wrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he is now Director Emeritus, and continues as a Senior R esearch Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Ins titution.Judith Shoolery is a former sc ience teacher who has worked as a writer and edito r on a variety of publications, most recently as a book editor at the Hoover Institution. Now retire d, she and her husband live in Half Moon Bay, Cali fornia.

Reviews

At 93, Teller is one of the last living links to the golden age of 20th-century physics. He was there when quantum theory was conceived, he participated in the Manhattan Project, and he has been called the "father" of the hydrogen bomb. Yet for all of his indisputable scientific genius, he is perhaps best known for his conservative politics. Just as Teller has been lauded by conservatives and reviled by liberals, some readers will find this book frank and revealing, while others will see it as hubristic and self-serving. For example, Teller's own version of his role in the Oppenheimer hearings understandably puts a sympathetic spin on events that some writers have likened to character assassination (see Richard Rhodes's Dark Sun, LJ 8/95). Political opinions aside, this book has flaws: it is too long and packed with unnecessary details, and it contains just one appendix (the text of Teller's testimony at the Oppenheimer hearings). General readers will do better with Stanley A. Blumberg and Louis G. Panos's Edward Teller (o.p.), but it should be noted that, when that book was published, many reviewers criticized it for whitewashing its subject. Clearly, Teller's story is far from simple. Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY Albany Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Teller's isn't a household name today, but in the 1950s he was dubbed "the father of the hydrogen bomb." Born in Hungary in 1908, Teller was educated in Germany, where he worked with some of the century's great scientists prior to the Nazi takeover. After arriving in the United States in 1935, he collaborated with other distinguished ?migr?s, such as Enrico Fermi and fellow Hungarian John von Neumann; he was one of the first scientists dispatched to Los Alamos, where he worked on the theoretical aspects of atom bomb design. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki came troubling years: Teller encountered great opposition to future nuclear research from the scientific community and found former friends unwilling to shake his hand after he testified against J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer's 1954 security review. Later, Teller went on to establish the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories as a center for ground-breaking research in many fields, and in the late 1950s became a scientific consultant to Nelson Rockefeller. As is often the case with memoirs, time is relative: the years in the book's last half move much more quickly than those in the first. This is unfortunate, since Teller's work on safe proliferation of nuclear energy, the so-called Stars Wars defense system and the early detection of earth-crossing objects is almost as important as his work during the first part of his career. While waiting for a future biographer to give the latter years their proper due, readers can enjoy these panoramic and beautifully written recollections of one of the great scientific, if controversial, figures of all time. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.