MAN OF THE HOUR

MAN OF THE HOUR is Jennet Conant's intimate profile of her grandfather James B. Conant, an influential and savvy architect of the nuclear age and the Cold War.

James Bryant Conant was a towering figure who was at the center of the enormous threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in WWI. 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 U.S. entrance in WWII.
During that war, Conant was the administrative director of the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the U.S with the support of the UK and Canada. 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. From the White House to Los Alamos to Harvard University, 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 very intimate, up-close look at some of the most argued cases of modern times—among them the use of chemical weapons, the decision to drop the bomb, Oppenheimer’s fate, the politics of post-war Germany and the Cold War—the repercussions of which are still affecting our world today.
Jenny has that rare total access—to the written record and personal memories – that allows readers a very close-up look at some of the most argued cases of modern times, among them the use of chemical weapons, the decision to drop the bomb, Oppenheimer’s fate, the politics of post-war Germany and the Cold War.

Conant is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington and Tuxedo Park and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II.