Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove

From Publishers Weekly
Edward Teller, the "Father of the H-bomb," emerges in this readable biography as a brilliant, insecure, sometimes paranoid figure with a significant—and decidedly ambiguous—historical legacy. Born in Hungary, Teller (1908–2003) absorbed a lifelong hatred of tyranny and a deep distrust of Soviet communism—one factor motivating his obsessive and successful advocacy of the hydrogen bomb during the early years of the Cold War. Other powerful forces in Teller's life were limitless scientific curiosity and intense personal ambition: he resented being passed up for the job of theoretical director of the Manhattan Project, and much of his later hunger for political power may have been a reaction to that disappointment. Teller used his influence to block efforts at negotiating a test ban treaty by presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and fed the Red Scare atmosphere of the '50s; he was the only colleague of J. Robert Oppenheimer's to denounce him as a security threat, a move that endeared Teller to right-wingers in Congress while dividing the scientific community. Teller's final political triumph was winning the support of the Reagan administration for "Star Wars." Goodchild, a BBC television producer and author of a biography of Oppenheimer, offers a detailed, studiously balanced portrait drawn from archives and interviews with Teller himself and many who knew (and loved or loathed) him. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* The destroyer god Shiva needed a human name and face: for many, Edward Teller--the father of the H-bomb--provided both. That face comes into sharp focus in this revealing but decidedly unauthorized biography exposing both Teller's maniacal enthusiasm for weapons of global destructiveness and his acute vulnerability to personal slights and professional indignities. Though he resists the temptation to fit all the contradictory details of a long and controversial life within one tidy psychological formula, Goodchild does trace suggestive links between the childhood insecurities of a friendless student prodigy and the adult aggressiveness of a politically influential mature scientist. In some of Teller's extremely bellicose behavior--such as his relentless campaign against the nuclear test bans proposed by Eisenhower and Kennedy--Goodchild discerns a chilling correspondence between the real Teller and the grimly comic caricature created by Stanley Kubrick in Dr. Strangelove. But alongside this damning comparison, Goodchild lays out a more sympathetic parallel, tracing the tragic similarities between Teller and Shakespeare's heroic but arrogant general Coriolanus. And it is tones of pathos, if not tragedy, that the reader repeatedly hears in Teller's responses to probing interview questions and in his recently discovered intimate correspondence with Maria Mayer as a brilliant mind struggles to shield--and to galvanize--an anxious psyche. A compelling reminder of the epoch-shaping power of one dominant personality. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
One Nobel Prize�winning physicist called Edward Teller, �A great man of vast imagination�[one of the] most thoughtful statesmen of science.� Another called him, �A danger to all that is important�It would have been a better world without [him].� That both opinions about Teller were commonly held and equally true is one of the enduring mysteries about the man dubbed �the father of the H-bomb.� In the story of Teller�s life and career, told here in greater depth and detail than ever before, Peter Goodchild unravels the complex web of harsh early experiences, character flaws, and personal and professional frustrations that lay behind the paradox of �the real Dr. Strangelove.� Goodchild�s biography draws on interviews with more than fifty of Teller�s colleagues and friends. Their voices echo through the book, expressing admiration and contempt, affection and hatred, as we observe Teller�s involvement in every stage of building the atomic bomb, and his subsequent pursuit of causes that drew the world deeper into the Cold War�alienating many of his scientific colleagues even as he provided the intellectual lead for politicians, the military, and presidents as they shaped Western policy. Goodchild interviewed Teller himself at the end of his life, and what emerges from this interview, as well as from Teller�s Memoirs and recently unearthed correspondence, is a clearer view of the contradictions and controversies that riddled the man�s life. Most of all, though, this absorbing biography rescues Edward Teller from the caricatures that have served to describe him until now. In their place, Goodchild shows us one of the most powerful scientists of the twentieth century in all his enigmatic humanity.


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Teller, who died last year at age 95, was world famous as the "father of the hydrogen bomb," a witness against J. Robert Oppenheimer in the latter's security hearing, and, finally, an ardent promoter of the Cold War arms race. Hated and shunned by many prominent physicists after the Oppenheimer affair, Teller had some supporters in the scientific community, and he acquired many allies in the political and military communities for his long string of weapons proposals. Goodchild, a BBC television producer and author of a 1980 biography of Oppenheimer, studied a wide range of primary and secondary sources and interviewed many people on both sides of the controversies that swirled around Teller. The result is a remarkably well-balanced study of a notoriously prickly and opinionated person. As previous biographies (Stanley Blumberg and Louis Panos's Edward Teller; Teller's own Memoirs) were criticized for whitewashing their subject, this is strongly recommended for both academic and public libraries of all sizes. Jack W. Weigel, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


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