Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist
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James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in World War I. As a controversial president of Harvard University, he was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions. As an advisor to FDR, he led the interventionist cause for US entrance in World War II. During that war, Conant oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and argued that it be used against the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. Later, he urged the Atomic Energy Commission to reject the hydrogen bomb and devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for international control of atomic weapons. As Eisenhower's high commissioner to Germany, he helped to plan German recovery and was an architect of the United States' Cold War policy.
Now New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant recreates the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century as her grandfather James experienced them. She describes the guilt, fears, and sometimes regret of those who invented and deployed the bombs and the personal toll it took. "A masterly account...a perceptive portrayal of a major player in world events throughout the mid-twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly), Man of the Hour is based on hundreds of documents and diaries, interviews with Manhattan Projects scientists, Harvard colleagues, and Conant's friends and family, including her father, James B. Conant's son. This is "a most serious work, well written and evocative of an era when the American foreign establishment exuded gravitas...[a] new, relentless, and personally invested account" (The New York Times Book Review).
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Jennet Conant. (2017). Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist. Simon & Schuster.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Jennet Conant. 2017. Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist. Simon & Schuster.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Jennet Conant, Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist. Simon & Schuster, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Jennet Conant. Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist. Simon & Schuster, 2017.
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- bioText: Jennet Conant is the author of Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Navigating a Dangerous Era and the New York Times bestsellers The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington and Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. She has written for Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Newsweek, and The New York Times. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.
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James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in World War I. As a controversial president of Harvard University, he was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions. As an advisor to FDR, he led the interventionist cause for US entrance in World War II. During that war, Conant oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and argued that it be used against the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. Later, he urged the Atomic Energy Commission to reject the hydrogen bomb and devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for... - isOwnedByCollections
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- "Gripping...an outstanding portrait" (The Wall Street Journal) of one of the most influential men of the greatest generation, James B. Conant—a savvy architect of the nuclear age and the Cold War—told by his granddaughter, New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant.
James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in World War I. As a controversial president of Harvard University, he was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions. As an advisor to FDR, he led the interventionist cause for US entrance in World War II. During that war, Conant oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and argued that it be used against the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. Later, he urged the Atomic Energy Commission to reject the hydrogen bomb and devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for international control of atomic weapons. As Eisenhower's high commissioner to Germany, he helped to plan German recovery and was an architect of the United States' Cold War policy.
Now New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant recreates the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century as her grandfather James experienced them. She describes the guilt, fears, and sometimes regret of those who invented and deployed the bombs and the personal toll it took. "A masterly account...a perceptive portrayal of a major player in world events throughout the mid-twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly), Man of the Hour is based on hundreds of documents and diaries, interviews with Manhattan Projects scientists, Harvard colleagues, and Conant's friends and family, including her father, James B. Conant's son. This is "a most serious work, well written and evocative of an era when the American foreign establishment exuded gravitas...[a] new, relentless, and personally invested account" (The New York Times Book Review). - sortTitle
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July 3, 2017
James Conant (1893–1978) is not a household name, but this extensive biography by one of his granddaughters, historian Jennet Conant (Tuxedo Park), should convince readers that he was an important figure in his time. A world-class chemist, Conant became chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department in 1931 and, to the surprise of many, university president in 1933. His reforms stirred controversy, but he attracted F.D.R.’s attention through early support of intervention against Hitler. In 1940, Conant joined the National Defense Research Committee, which had been created to mobilize the scientific establishment for military research. He quickly entered the debate over the possibility of developing an atomic bomb; long before J. Robert Oppenheimer was hired to build it, Conant was at work. His granddaughter composes a masterly account of his performance in organizing, recruiting, and supervising the immense Manhattan Project. Conant continued to serve Truman and Eisenhower during the Cold War. Retiring after working as the first U.S. ambassador to West Germany, he wrote several volumes that criticized America’s educational system. The minutia of political maneuvering occasionally becomes a hard slog, but mostly this is a perceptive portrayal of a major player in world events throughout the mid-20th century.
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July 15, 2017
A biography of a "chemist, statesman, educator, and critic...[who] had within his grasp all the elements to help forge the new atomic age."James Conant (1893-1978) is only moderately well-known because, ironically, he accomplished not one but many things. He deserves better, and he receives it from his granddaughter, Jennet Conant (A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS, 2011, etc.), a skilled historian. A quintessential New Englander (he possessed a "cold, clear-eyed Yankee pragmatism") and superb student, Conant excelled in private school and at Harvard, where he received a doctorate in chemistry in 1916. He was an exceptional researcher, rising to become chairman of the chemistry department in 1931 and president of the university in 1933. He was a vigorous, controversial reformer, abolishing Latin requirements and athletic scholarships and allowing women to attend Harvard medical and law schools. Appointed head of the National Defense Research Committee in 1940, Conant spent the war administrating massive scientific programs, most importantly the Manhattan project. After 1945, he remained a top adviser. He declined the position of High Commissioner of Germany in 1951 but accepted in 1953 and became the first ambassador to West Germany. Conant was a brilliant chemist, an outstanding college president, a talented administrator, and an accomplished diplomat, but he was not charismatic, eccentric, or ahead of his time. Generally liberal, he had no objection to Harvard's Jewish quota or firing teachers who invoked the Fifth Amendment. He is well-served by the 500 pages of his granddaughter's intensely researched, insightful, and rarely dull biography. Conant deserves a place among the traditional "wise men" (Acheson, Harriman et al.), an elite group of white, male, East Coast advisers, all pragmatic, realistic, and nonideological, who guided presidential policy from World War II through the end of the Cold War. This book gives him that place.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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April 15, 2017
Conant insisted on open admissions as Harvard president, served as adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and administrative director of the Manhattan Project, campaigned mightily for international control of atomic weapons and ended up as President Eisenhower's high commissioner to Germany. That's some life, told by his daughter, the New York Times best-selling author of The Irregulars.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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