Events

After the first atomic bomb burst over the New Mexican desert in 1945 and as the Cold war developed, the American myth of the Wild West expanded to encompass atomic sheriffs saving the world for democracy.  Jon Hunner's brisk, engaging biography documents the emergence of the Atomic West and the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who came to feel at home in the American West.  Against the backdrop of the physicist's life twining with the region's history, Hunner explores the promise and peril of the atomic age.